Cherry Blossom
by Lornesgoldenhair
Summary: Post Hell Bent. Clara wakes up in her TARDIS diner and the view outside the window isn't quite what it seems. She last saw the figure by the pond 100 years ago and while some things change with the seasons, others never do.
1. Chapter 1

She was pretty sure that the last thing she remembered was not dozing off in one of the booths. For starters she had perfectly comfortable beds on her TARDIS, but more important she knew fine well she just didn't doze off. Ever. At least not accidently. For the last one hundred years Clara Oswald hadn't needed to sleep.

Sure she could sleep if she wanted to, she could eat and drink too, but it was no longer essential. So what was she doing waking up form a nap, curled on her side in her 'Diner?' And where did that blanket come from, a hideous yellow plaid she was certain she didn't own.

Clara sat up slowly, pushing her body up with a little difficulty from the red shiny seat. Was she injured? She could still get injured but the effects were only temporary and almost as quickly as the cuts and brises appeared they would vanish the same day. It had been pretty freaky to begin with but she was used to it now, casually glancing down her arm to where the skin was already knitted together.

She shrugged. Yeah, she'd been injured, maybe knocked out. She could still do knocked out but like the bruises it didn't last, her body was frozen in time and would revert back to the moment before her death in Trap Street within minutes. So what was going on? Clara frowned, a tiny line forming between her brows for a moment. One that would never become deeper or win any companions. Just like the single grey hair she had found that would never multiply. She could have plucked it out but somehow didn't have the heart. She had lived and breathed and aged once, it did her good to remember that.

Curiosity getting the better of her as usual she craned her neck to look out of the window. The last planet she had visited was a fairly desolate moon base but one which had been under attack from a strange breed of aquatic creatures the colonists had found when drilling below the surface to find oil. It had been a grey and colourless world and she hadn't been particularly enjoying the adventure alone.

Clara had been looking forward to picking Ashildr up from ancient Greece at some point in the next few days, she got pretty lonely when her immortal friend decided to take one of her trips, but they always lasted too long for Clara, whose attention span encouraged her to skip between destinations in days or weeks rather than years at a time. Ashildr preferred to immerse herself in a culture for a decade or two, or until people became suspicious of her eternal youth, and would then be forced to move on, write up her journals and pick a new destination. Sometimes she hung around and travelled with Clara for a while, sometimes she didn't. She was several billion years old, her needs were a little different from her friend's.

This was no moon base however, Clara saw. If something bad had happened on that moon her TARDIS had somehow managed to get her out of there and settle somewhere much more peaceful. How exactly it had done that didn't make sense, but the scene outside the window was one of vague familiarity. Cut green grass and the smell of the same came to her as she opened the door a fraction. She could hear birds. Ahead of her there was a large pond populated with ducks and several old cherry trees around its edge keeping them in shade. It was a glorious spring day by the look of it and she squinted up into the sky to see a single sun. Very familiar indeed. Too familiar and something was wrong.

Clara cast her eyes across the grass and beyond to streets and houses on the other side of the park. Although there were animals, the birds, ducks and even a squirrel she saw dashing up a tree, there were no other living creatures. No people, or aliens, nothing obviously humanoid at least. There was no sound of children playing or chatter and it immediately put her on her guard. Places like this she had seen before and most turned out to be populated with some kind of deadly cannibalistic robot, zombies or an uber virus which had wiped out the dominant species. Great, her TARDIS had got her off the scary moonbase and dumped her into a strange Stepford wives situation, in moments she was sure they would all come marching round the corner with prams.

'Mistress,' the voice came from behind her and Clara spun round in terror only to find no source. She glanced quickly around her diner, everything in its place. 'Mistress,' the voice repeated with a slight robotic hint. Robots. She knew it. 'Mistress has woken,' and a trundling noise alerted her to the fact that whatever was speaking to her was now approaching her from behind the bar. Clara's nervous gaze dropped and she peered around the end of the unit. 'May I be of any assistance?' it said and a red light emerged followed by a silver body.

'What the…?'

'May I be of assistance?' it repeated.

'K-9?'

'Affirmative.'

'What are you doing in my TARDIS?'

'Assisting.'

'Right…' Clara looked at the dog shaped robot and then back out the window towards the pond. K-9 had never been the most helpful of robots really, his abilities were limited and from what she could work out the Doctor had only ever kept him around for company. The Doctor. There was as far as she knew only one K-9 and he belonged with his Master, the Doctor, which meant he must be nearby.

He must be nearby. Clara's unbeating heart leapt in her chest. He must be out there somewhere, blue box parked up in the trees or at the corner of a street. He'd probably pulled her off of that moon base and deposited her there for safety, vanished again like he always did, no reason to stay.

She was just a girl, an unnamed unknown girl he'd rescued. She felt a tightness in her throat. He must have carried her back to her TARDIS, wrapped her in that horrible blanket, left her curled up somewhere safe…

No, wait, she was a girl in a TARDIS he's pulled off a moonbase. That didn't happen every day. He wouldn't just dump her, he'd be too curious. Who was she? Why did she have a TARDIS to begin with? And now there was K-9. Clara watched the robot tootle around the diner, his ridiculous little stuck on tail wagging. He must still be around close by, he wouldn't leave his pet behind.

Something didn't add up in her head.

'K-9?'

'Yes Mistress,' he stopped in his tracks to answer her.

'Where is your Master?'

'Nearby.'

'Did he make you wait here with me?'

'Affirmative.'

Clara gazed out the window, still no one in sight. He'd been so close he'd carried her back home. So close she'd been in his arms. If she closed her eyes she could imagine so easily what that felt like, she could catch the scent of him in her memory. He'd been right here.

'Should K-9 take Mistress to see Master?'

Oh there was a question. Clara was aware of the robot coming to a halt by her feet, of him looking out the window with her, of the endless wag of its tail.

'I don't know,' she said. 'It's complicated, about as complicated as it gets actually.'

Neural block or no neural block he probably suspected something. The universe wasn't exactly coming down with girls driving stolen TARDISes. Of women with sonic sunglasses dangling out of their top pockets. And that raised just so many questions, for him, for her, all the questions whose answers had forced them apart in the first place but with the added bonus of him not being able to remember most of it. Any of it? She didn't know exactly how the block had worked. So many unknowns…Seeing him seemed like a torturous option right now.

'K-9 requires an answer,' he prodded. Apparently 'complicated' wasn't clear enough for him either.

'I should probably just go,' Clara said. She felt uncharacteristically panicky. All the things she'd dealt with in a century and seeing her best friend made her feel ill. 'You should thank your master and tell him… tell him…'

'What should I convey to Master?' K-9 asked.

Suddenly the thought of K-9s robotic voice delivering any kind of emotionally laden message to the Doctor pained her. She wanted to do it herself. She had wanted to do it herself since they had gone their separate ways. She missed him, she owed him. She always missed him so much and they had both given up everything for the sake of the universe and now here he was yards away from her and the same universe seemed complicit in throwing them together.

'I just want to see him,' she whispered, arguing with herself.

There was a whirl at her feet and K-9 headed for the door purposefully.

'No… wait… I…' the door pushed open and the little robot tootled off in the direction of the pond.

'Follow K-9, mistress.'

Clara ran one hand through her hair, chewed her lip, this was not what was supposed to be happening. She should turn around, get to the control room and take off. She shouldn't see him, the last hundred years had been stable enough, enjoyable enough, she had met great people and seen great things, she had become her very own Doctor. She should let this go, just let it go. They had agreed that was what was needed.

But she was already following the robot, his lights flashing like little beacons to direct her. For him it was a simple command and he was to follow it, execute it to the best of his ability as he trundled across the grass ahead. He was picking up sped and Clara broke into a trot to catch him.

'K-9!' she called, 'K-9 wait!'

At the top of a hummock of grass he came to a halt and Clara paused to collect herself at his side.

'It's not simple K-9. We're not supposed to see each other, not ever, we're… we're a bad combination.'

'K-9 does not understand.'

'Don't worry, sometimes I don't either. Sometimes I don't think I ever will. How can something so beautiful be wrong? After everything we said to each other that day, everything we realised…. It's not fair….'

'Mistress?'

Clara wiped her eyes on her sleeve. 'Sorry. God why am I saying sorry to a robot dog?'

'Mistress…'

Clara looked down at him and frowned. His odd little head was stuck out straight ahead of him and his tail was at right angles to his body. He was pointing down the hill, his red eye-lights flashing, at a figure seated under a cherry tree.

At first Clara felt her chest tighten horribly in memory of the heart that once beat there. Then she felt a tremble in her legs, a weakness pass through her. She watched the figure, long slim limbs stretched out in front of him, a sketch book on his lap. Every now and then soft petals fell from above him, landing on his shoulders, in his hair, silent and delicate.

'Doctor…' she breathed.

He was about twenty yards away, his eyes focused on the pond and the landscape around him as he worked on his sketch. His clothes were dark save for the ancient t-shirt below his hoodie, his jacket was cast to one side. Clara noted the slightly unruly length of his steel grey hair, the way his eyes crinkled as he squinted against the sun a little to appraise his subject. He was the same old Doctor but for one difference she could see straight away, a beard, full and soft. It did not age him, rather it added to him an air of relaxation, a sense of being comfortable in his own skin that he had often lacked before. Clara tilted her head and drank him in, her eyes burning and arms aching to wrap around him. So close, so familiar, so undeniably hers.

She didn't know what to do. Whether to run down the little hill towards him or leg it back to her TARDIS. She bit down on her lip harder. She had to realise, he had no memory of her, if she flung herself down the hill he'd consider her a madwoman. She didn't know if she could bear to speak with him again as she had so long ago in the diner, him unaware of who she was and what they had been to each other. She had had to do that then but it had broken her heart. She would surely give herself away this time only to have it broken again when he looked at her with no recognition. Clara took a step backwards intending to leave.

'Don't go,' he said suddenly, his voice just loud enough to carry in the utter silence of the park around them. He lifted his gaze from the sketchpad and looked straight at her; it was all it took to draw her back. Clara froze.

'Doctor… I…' words failed her for a moment. She'd pictured coming across him somewhere in space and time before now, wished and prayed for it, but in her mind it always felt easier than what lay in front of her now. She watched as he rose to his feet and set aside his art. She remembered his height and his slender frame, the way he slouched as he approached her and the mobility in his features. But most of all she remembered those eyes, the succession of colours in them, the greys blues and greens and the way they darkened when he looked at her. As he looked at her now.

He was in front of her, looking down into her face, one hand tentatively reaching for hers.

'You look terrified,' he said quietly.

'I'm fine, really,' Clara replied trying to muster some strength to her tone, 'Thank you for. Saving me I presume?'

'A small bit of saving yes, I happened to be passing through the area.'

'Just passing through?'

'Yes…' he looked over the top of her head at nothing in particular and then back down at her, 'Ok no not just passing through, I'd heard the moon base had a spot of bother.'

'The distress call…'

'Yes we both answered it, it was bound to happen eventually.'

'What was?' she asked.

'We'd both try to rescue the same people,' he said with a shrug, 'We're too similar you and I, we were bound to go for the same adventure at least once.'

Clara frowned. 'I er… well I suppose so.'

'That and your sunglasses have a homing signal embedded,' he confessed.

'What?!'

'You know in case I lost them….you… them….originally it was in case I lost _them_ …. Which I sort of did… in the diner…'he ran a hand through his hair and looked about again a bit guiltily.

'You're stalking me!' Clara said outraged.

'Not deliberately no. It's not stalking I just happened to remember they had that function and I could look you up, make sure you didn't need rescuing and then curiosity got the better of me.'

'Always does with you doesn't it, that why you're always in so much bother. Curiosity killed the cat Doctor, you should leave it well alone and anyway who says I needed rescuing I had the situation under control.'

'Yes it looked like it as you floated about unconscious in that underground lake about to be eaten by the fishman chief.'

'I would have been fine!'

'I suppose you had a plan,' he scoffed.

'I did! Anyway if you had to insist on rescuing me why did you dump me in a diner booth? It was a bloody rock pool last time after that train fiasco, and neither are the most comfortable to wake up wondering what the hell's happened and anyway that blanket was… offensively coloured and itchy!'

'Well obviously I would have put you somewhere more comfortable but your control freak TARDIS refused me access beyond the diner. What kind of disguise is that by the way a diner? Not exactly subtle!'

'Like your ancient blue box fits into so many situations perfectly.'

'She is not ancient! And anyway at least I can park her!'

'It's not my fault the chameleon loop is busted!'

'All mark 40s have broken loops you should have remembered that when you picked the first design.'

'Sorry if I was too busy worrying about you at the time to go with a better option!'

Suddenly the Doctor grinned, a face splitting dazzling smile that stopped Clara in her tracks.

'You haven't changed at all,' he said holding back a laugh.

For a moment Clara couldn't follow what he was saying. 'I haven't… what?'

His smile became less face splitting and more kind, a softness in his eyes forming which she'd missed now for decades. A look they'd shared a thousand times but which she never thought she'd see again.

'Oh my God…' she said.

'Hello,' the Doctor said through his smile.

'You… wait… you can't….What's my name?' Clara asked quietly.

'Your name is Clara Oswald,' he replied holding her gaze. 'Who else could you possibly be?'

'But you've just figured that out, right?' she challenged, ' You know with the circumstances and the TARDIS and the… clues…'

His gentle expression and the tilt of his head told her no. His eyes shone.

'You… you remember me?' she asked.

When he replied she was sure she heard the slightest tremor in his voice.

'Oh Clara, Clara, Clara, I'm sorry…. But I never forgot.'

XXXXXXX


	2. Chapter 2

It was as though Clara's entire understanding of the universe had been turned on its head; her entire understanding of him and their relationship. For a moment she stood frozen, eyes locked on his, watching the tides of emotion behind them shift as truthfully as the sea.

'You never forgot me?' she asked softly.

'No,' she felt him grasp both of her hands in his, felt that strange sensation of his alien cool skin. He stepped a little closer. 'Sorry about that,' he added awkwardly, 'We needed a solution, I just went with the one we had available.'

'I let you go and… you _knew_.' Clara stated in disbelief. Realisation was slowly trickling through her mind. 'Wait… you mean you... you lied? You lied to me, to my face? About the whole thing?'

He sighed heavily, defensively, 'I knew you'd say that, knew you'd see it that way.'

'That's because it _is_ that way!' Clara suddenly let go of his hands and stepped back. 'Are you honestly saying you sat in there, ' she indicated her diner behind her, 'And told me the sorry 'story' of Clara and that I'd been totally wiped from your head and you let me… let me feel all that, you let me experience all that pain, you broke my heart and it was all lies! You were duping me the whole time…'

'It wasn't like that, Clara.'

'It wasn't? Then tell me what it was like, because from where I'm standing it's looking an awful lot like that time you told me you'd found Gallifrey! You did that in a bloody café too!'

'Ah… yes I suppose it does resemble that, motives are sort of the same too,' he scratched the back of his head.

'You're unbelievable!' Clara folded her arms and stared out over the pond. She felt him come to her side and hover as socially awkward as ever.

'Clara…'

'Tell me exactly what happened,' she demanded, glaring at a stray duck in the reeds.

'Well you can probably guess, I mean the neural block didn't work, I can remember you.'

'Well obviously. I managed to discern that bit myself. No, that's not what I mean. I want detail. I want to know exactly everything that happened between deciding to press the button and…. And _now_.'

'That's quite a lot.'

'We're both more or less immortal, we have time.' She angrily watched K-9 circle the pond disturbing the wildlife.

'Can we at least sit down?' the Doctor tried.

Irritated she glanced across at him, 'Did you know it wouldn't work? Did you know from the start that I'd broken it and it wouldn't wipe either of our memories?'

'I…' he opened his mouth to answer and then appeared to take some thinking time. 'I suspected it wouldn't do anything, I wasn't sure.'

'And when you 'passed out' in the TARDIS?'

'Umm…'

'You faked that?!'

'Not entirely, no… I just… look it still gave me one hell of a zap, I didn't know if it was wiping my memory or not… if it would do it then or after a few hours… or if it was just going to give me a nasty headache. I had to do something, something decisive for our sake.'

Clara turned to him arms still crossed and looked up sternly into his face. 'Did you or did you not fake passing out?'

The Doctor waggled his head slightly. 'Alright… yes… a bit. I exaggerated.'

She let out a growl and shoved him. 'What is the matter with you?! Why are you so utterly incapable of telling the truth to me?'

'I am capable of telling the truth Clara,' he said quietly, looking away, 'I told you it in the Cloisters.'

That stopped her in her tracks. Clara felt angry tears of frustration form in her eyes. 'I know, I know what you said then but then minutes later you're pretending to pass out and have your memory wiped. Why?'

'It was for the best, we had to separate and we had to do it right then. No last hurrah or neither of us would have had the willpower to do it.'

'So you played the martyr.'

'It wasn't like that. I'd gone too far, me not you… it was my fault.'

'We both know if it had been the other way round and I had the capabilities I'd have gone to the same lengths for you,' Clara admitted a little less harshly. 'We're as bad as each other sometimes.' There was a pause punctuated by infrequent bird song. She watched a faint breeze ruffle through the cherry blossom attached to the tree the Doctor had sat beneath. A few petals drifted slowly to the ground soothingly.

'What happened then?' she asked after a moment her tone softer. 'You 'passed out' and then what…?'

'I shut down,' he said simply.

'What?'

'Like I said it was a hell of a zap, the pain was… quite real. It didn't knock me out but I wished it had. Time Lords can slow their metabolisms if needed, usually to heal. There wasn't physical damage but…' he smiled at her uncertainly, 'I couldn't face what was going to come next, it hurt too much.'

'So you what? Powered down?' Clara looked at him curiously. 'Just switched off because you couldn't face it?' She thought she caught shame in his expression then.

'Yes, I know it's a bit pathetic.'

Clara thought for a moment before brushing his arm softly, 'Not really. If I could have switched off rather than face all that I think I would have.'

'No, you'd have faced it,' he said. 'But anyway you couldn't, you had to get rid of me,' the Doctor said, 'I switched off during which time I suspect you deposited me in the desert, came up with a plan…'

'Yes…' Clara conceded, 'I had to make sure you had someone there when you came round.'

'I appreciated it, I needed a little help. The after effects made me groggy,' he said shortly, 'For a few days afterwards things were confusing, I didn't know where I was, who people were. It was like concussion.'

'Did you forget me at all?'

'Oh yes, the mighty Gallifreyan neural block worked…'

'It did?' she asked surprised. 'But you said you faked the passing out and you can remember now.'

'Think of it like a hangover. When I woke up I forgot you for about a week and then it all came back.'

'I've had hangovers like those,' Clara smirked, 'Sign you're getting old when they last longer than a day.'

The Doctor snorted. 'This is serious you know.'

'I know that!' Clara countered. 'But it's also typical of us… don't you think?' she looked at him sideways again, smiled conspiratorially, watched his lips quirk in response.

'Yes,' he sighed, 'It's just like us.'

'So all your memories came back and when I saw you in the diner?'

'I knew you'd been watching me,' the Doctor said. 'That you'd been finding it hard to…let go.'

Clara felt a tension in her cheeks. The ghost of where a blush might have risen had her heart still been beating. 'I was worried about you. You don't do well alone. You didn't have your TARDIS or any money. I had to make sure you got you things back; that you were going to be ok.' She felt the weight of his gaze on her face.

'I know, Clara, it's ok. But you see the thing was there would always be an excuse, a reason to not quite leave and I knew all that would do would be prolong the pain. I needed to…'

'Cut me loose?' Clara asked.

'Yes… I needed you to move on.'

'So you convinced me you remembered nothing, that you could sit with me for an hour and have no idea who I was.'

'Yes.'

'Did I mention that was horrible?'

'Not in so many words but yes…'

Clara kicked at the ground with one shoe.

'It worked,' she admitted. 'I moved on. Took a while, there were times I… but I did move on.'

'I know,' the Doctor replied, 'So did I… well sort of, eventually.'

'Apart from tracking me with the sunglasses.'

The Doctor looked outraged and it made her smile. 'I didn't do that all the time, I just had a quick look now and then. You know so we didn't bump into one another….'

'So we didn't bump into each other?! You are such a liar!'

'Yes well we have established that haven't we?'

Clara turned back to him at last. 'It's been a hundred years for me, how about you?'

'A few more,' he admitted, 'One hundred and thirty five to be precise.'

'Oh,' she nodded in appraisal, pouted her lips, 'Been busy?'

'Oh you know, same old same old,' the Doctor said conversationally as he shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked on his heels.

'Doctor, I have to ask, but why have you got a beard?'

'What's wrong with a beard?'

'You've never had a beard.'

'Exactly I fancied a change.'

'Beards are gross, Doctor.'

He sighed in a dramatic way and feigned offence, 'Mine is perfectly hygienic Clara.'

Clara peered at it, standing on tiptoes and looking from one side of his face to another. Up close she could see the salt and pepper beard was clean and soft if rather unkempt, much like the hair on his head. Hesitantly she reached up and placed her hand on his cheek.

It hit her like a tidal wave, the images which flooded into her mind at that touch and she retracted her hand like it had been burned.

'Sorry,' he said.

'What was that?' Clara asked wide eyed.

'I should have thought to mention. The beard's not the only thing that's changed.'

'I don't understand.' Clara blinked trying to dispel the shadowed images of what she'd seen. They floated in front of her as though she'd been caught in the flash of a camera and it had temporarily scared her eyes.

'I'm telepathic.'

'You've always been telepathic.'

'Yes but I was a rubbish telepath, now I'm… considerably better,' he said proudly and waggled his eyebrows at her.

'How?'

'Went to school,' he said.

Clara giggled, 'there's a telepath school? It is like Hogwarts but for psychics?'

'Don't be ridiculous Clara,' the Doctor grumbled.

'What do they teach you?'

His face brightened. 'Oh all sorts of things from the basics right up to telekinesis and beyond.'

'Ooo can you lift pencils with your mind?'

'What?!'

'It's a thing, there was a book when I was little about a little girl who could move things with her mind. She used to practice on pencils…'

'Clara…'

'I know I know shut up,' they exchanged a smile and she felt him take her hand again.

'So are we…are you still angry with me?' the Doctor asked. 'Can we not be angry?'

Clara sighed. 'Well it all happened a long time ago, and we both seem to be OK and I think you were trying to do the right thing…' she watched the relief spread over his face, 'But hold your horses this doesn't mean there is other stuff that needs discussing….'

'There is?' he asked, his expression a blue eyed look of shock.

'Yes… like how you once again have been making decisions about me for 'my own good,' likehow stalking isn't healthy in any kind of relationship, like four and a half billion years punching a wall….'

'Oh… that…' he looked sheepish and she gave him a pitying look.

'But we can come back to that there are more important things right at this moment,' she reassured.

'Such as?'

Clara cocked her head at him and let her eyes wander over his face. Over the new beard and the ancient eyes; over the few new lines which had developed in the century that had passed, a reminder that the Doctor did age, just incredibly slowly. A reminder he wasn't truly immortal, albeit it in a slightly different way from her.

'Do you know I think I'm starting to understand,' Clara said.

'Oh? Understand what?'

'Time.'

The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her, 'That's a big one, Clara, and no offence but I've been doing this a lot longer than you…'

'No, just hear me out,' she interrupted, 'I mean in relation to me personally. Here I am, frozen in time, just one heartbeat left but I can chose when I go back to it, I can chose when to die. When I first realised that I absolutely made the most of it. I've seen some incredible things and there was always another adventure to plan. But recently…'

She saw the Doctor tilt his head to watch her and wondered for a moment if he could hear her thoughts.

'Recently,' she continued, 'I've begun to realise that I've been a live a lot longer than I originally could have expected. I'd be like 129 now,' she laughed briefly. 'But the thing is everyone I knew and loved, my gran, my dad, they are gone.'

'It's not unusual to lose a parent, Clara.'

'No, but it is unusual to lose all your friends. And to start to lose the children of your friends too. Next thing it'll be their grandchildren. And all the while I'm still here, exactly as I was one hundred years ago.'

'I know.'

'You once said to me immortality isn't living for ever, its watching everybody else die.'

'Yes… well I wasn't known for my optimism back then.'

'I'm not being pessimistic, just realistic. What I'm saying is, I get it, I understand it better now, some of the things you must have felt, how desperately you must have wanted to hang onto loved ones.'

The Doctor looked away sharply, 'I went too far,' he said.

'Yes,' Clara said, 'And so did I, throwing myself into the fire again and again, 'going native' you said. I wasn't immortal, I was reckless. 'Breakable' you said but with no respect for it. No respect for you. I couldn't bear the idea of losing you, I begged you to come back when we were dealing with the FisherKing but I never stopped to think how my actions must have felt to you. How frightened you must have been of losing me. I never allowed you that.'

'It sounds like you've done a little learning yourself,' he said, the atmosphere suddenly heavier.

'Yeah well…. I didn't get to go to Hogwarts like you,' Clara said lightly and squeezed his hand. 'Doctor?'

'Yes?'

'Can we stop talking now? Just for a bit? It's a lot to process at once.'

'Ah of course, you and your tiny human brain…'

'Shut up!' Clara poked him in the chest and then laid her palm flat against one of his hearts. 'I've missed you,' she whispered for fear her voice would catch in her throat.

'I've missed you too Clara Oswald.'

The well of sadness suddenly filled her throat. 'And to think I had no idea you were doing that, missing me, all those years.' She felt one hand brush softly up her back to rest in her hair, pull her against his shoulder and she let herself be cradled.

'I was never far away,' the Doctor said, 'Even if the neural block had worked I'd have ended up close by; the laws of the universe can't be completely broken, great forces can't be kept apart. You were my first face, Clara, your name is written across both my hearts. Even if my memory of you was gone, even if I didn't fully understand why, I would follow you without ever knowing who you were.'

Clara closed her eyes and buried her face in his hoodie. That old familiar smell somewhere between cinnamon and all spice welcomed her and she felt him tighten his arms easily around her, rest his head on hers. Slowly, slowly she felt the press of his lips to her forehead, then her temple. They travelled to her cheek, tempting her to turn her face towards him, guiding him nearer. She reached again for his face, her fingertips brushing the thick silver hair behind his ear and her palm against the soft tickle of his beard.

Clara tensed expecting the blast of images from him but he appeared this time to have taken his telepathy into account. Instead she was greeted by a carefully measured stream of specific memories, including each time she had held his face that way. Each and every time she had comforted him, embraced him, calmed him when things had been too much. The hidden secret moments between them that could have been so much more, if only one of them had made that move, had the courage before it was over. If they had would it have all been different?

His lips had moved to the corner of hers and their light touch immediately called to mind the one and only time they had kissed, deep in the darkness if the Cloisters when they sensed the end could be near and the realised too late what they should have done from the start. She had held onto that memory jealously, the one morsel of how it should have been, but now here was another chance and it couldn't be lost. Clara responded to him by pressing herself more firmly against his body, opening her mouth slightly to the flick of his tongue.

How had she lived without this? How had she lived without him? Why had she never tried to find him? Was it because she knew she would never be able to leave again, that he could so easily capture her with that voice playing in her ears, those eyes, that touch. The surge of feeling was as strong as it had ever been. As powerful, as strong and just as dangerous. She felt his hand tangle in her hair, the other grip her hip, her own snaking under his t-shirt out of pure need. A century out of time and nothing had changed. The Doctor pushed Clara willingly to the ground, lowering her onto a bed of sweet grass and fallen cherry blossom, onto a bed that should have been occupied a hundred years before.

His mouth suckled her neck, one hand massaging her breast, and above her the sun moved to set in clear empty skies. It was too late, she realised.

They couldn't stop now.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

The Doctor was dozing and Clara had to admit that it amused her. During the years when they had travelled together it had been her begging to stop for a while, get a few hours rest. Now she could stay awake infinitely and here he was, propped against the cherry tree fast asleep. It made her chuckle.

Clara allowed herself the luxury of snuggling against him and just allowing time to pass undisturbed. Evening had well and truly fallen but it remained warm enough to sit out. The Doctor had carelessly donned his hoodie again but his chest was bare beneath, and her fingers wandered aimlessly across it forming memories. Soft hair, slim muscle, strength of bone. She counted the ribs on his side through his warmed skin and pressed her lips to his sternum. He was real, strong and alive; she could feel his heartbeats under her palms and against her ear.

Their encounter in the cherry blossom hadn't lasted long, the need to be together too pressing after a century apart. She had wanted to consume him, feel every part of his skin, press her lips to every sensitive point on his body. When they had kissed in the Cloisters she had been left with the sense of something unfulfilled and incomplete. Now Clara felt their union had finally been made, not just physically but on a deeper level. Perhaps they were a hybrid indeed. Prophecies aside she had watched his face as they made love, how his eyes had closed as he had sunk into her, how his brow crinkled as he focused on his increasing desire, the way he bit down on his lip as he fought to hold off his release. She had cried a little afterwards as she held him out of nothing but joy, she thought perhaps he had too.

Now she let her hand trail down over his stomach and tested the soft flesh there with a gentle prod and a grin. He was exactly as she thought he would be and much as his personality predicted; wiry but with a hidden and sensitive underbelly. Her prodding rewarded with a disturbed grunt Clara finally looked up to his face as he came around, a slightly bleary smile and a squeeze to bring her closer, feel his lips on her forehead and hear his sigh. She considered moving her hand lower again to where he had carelessly refastened his trousers but he caught her wrist and drew it to his lips before resting it on his abdomen. Clara pouted.

'I want to have another go,' she wheedled.

The Doctor snorted, 'I'm not a fun fayre ride, Clara.' He seemed relaxed but he kept her hand firmly away.

Clara scrabbled up his body a little, swung her leg over his hips and straddled him comfortably. He raised his eyebrows.

'And what do you think you're doing up there?' he questioned.

'Like I said, I want another go,' Clara managed to get her hands to his fly again before he again stopped her. This time her irritation got the better of her. 'OK, what's wrong?'

He shifted uncomfortably under her gaze.

'What?' she pushed.

'You know,' he said confusingly.

Clara blinked at him, 'I know what? What do I know? Because I'm not getting it. Didn't you want to do that? You looked like you wanted to do that. You _sounded_ like you did.' A pleasant memory passed through her mind, the soft panting she had heard as he had come close, the way the noise had become strangled just before he had peaked.

The Doctor looked heavenward, discomfort in every feature. 'I did want to… it's just…well.'

'Well?'

' _You_ didn't, you weren't enjoying it as much as me,' he said softly. 'And I only realised that when we were… well into things and…' he dropped his gaze and avoided hers, 'I should have stopped.'

Clara sat back on his thighs a little. 'What are you on about?'

A sigh. She didn't think she'd ever seen him look so uncomfortable. And something else, a little afraid.

'No, seriously what are you on about?' she continued, 'Because you're making no sense at all. How can you think I didn't want that? I've wanted _that_ for about as long as I can remember, and for your information since way before the Cloisters, before Trap Street, I…. oh….'

Clara stopped a sudden realisation dawning on her. 'Oh..' she said again. 'Oh of course!'

'It's OK,' he said quietly, 'It's been a hundred years since Trap Street, I don't expect everything to have stayed the same between us. I understand, it had become a fantasy, you thought you wanted it and then the reality wasn't what you'd expected.'

'No… no… shut up, shut up!' Clara suddenly rushed to explain. 'Just shut up and listen to me, you're getting it all wrong.'

'Clara…' he moaned.

'No, don't look like that all crestfallen, stop it!' she scooted forward on his thighs again, clamped her own around his hips while she wrapped her arms around his top half.

'Clara what are you doing!'

'Shut up and listen,' she kissed him into silence. 'You're getting it wrong. I do want this, I did want that, it's just I forgot, I forgot to explain.'

He drew his head back a little to look at her. 'Explain what?'

'My frozen physiology,' she said as though it would clarify everything. The Doctor frowned.

'Your frozen….' His eyes widened, 'your frozen physiology,' he said with more understanding.

'Exactly. Doctor my heart doesn't beat, I don't need to breathe, I'm in total stasis with a few tweaks and exceptions so that I can talk and move and emote and so on but this isn't one of them… this hasn't been made an exception, I can physically make love but I can't, you know… _finish._ '

Clara stopped, explanation over and looked at him, 'So you see I did want it, I wanted you, I just can't, you know, haven't for a hundred years, and it does tend to freak people out, you know if I have a partner, they find it a bit difficult at first,' he raised his eyebrows slightly, 'What? It's been a hundred years I've dated people!' she laughed, 'I have to remind myself to breathe sometimes because people find it disconcerting. It's sort of the same with this. It's no big deal, honestly, so stop feeling bad, if that's what's wrong? Yeah?'

She stroked his hair while he appeared to consider.

'Doctor?' she asked with a hint of worry, 'You're not annoyed are you? That I've been with people. I mean not many people, not dozens or anything, I always loved you, that never stopped I just…'

'You haven't been able to properly make love for a hundred years?' he asked, his voice low.

'Its two separate things Doctor, making love does not equate with orgasm, it's about who you're with and what you feel in your heart.'

'I'm aware of that Clara, but this is a bit different…your heart can't beat… because of me. This is my fault.'

'Doctor! Stop that! Just stop that right now!'

'You have to pretend to breathe when someone is close to you so they don't 'freak out,' he said horrified, 'You do the same in bed because otherwise it would seem pretty odd for you lover? Gods, Clara,' he let his head fall back against the tree in anguish. 'Don't you see? None of this is right. Don't you see I'm still causing damage, even after all this time apart?'

'No you aren't, no!' Clara felt a tinge of panic, 'Don't say that, don't start with the 'we're so bad for each other' speech, I've just got you back, please.'

'What else is missing?' he asked her suddenly, 'I don't suppose you sleep? Or eat? Or need to drink? You won't feel hot in the sun or cold in the snow. You can engage in the act of sex but you can't feel it? Clara I've robbed you of everything pleasurable in life, everything most humans live for to enjoy. This is worse than I ever imagined, I thought at least I'd given you some time, but what's the point of time if you can't enjoy anything about it.'

'Doctor! No, that's not what it's like,' Clara grasped his face between her hands and let her fingers rub against the soft hair of his beard. He tried to avoid her gaze and she noticed his eyes turn slightly red. 'Doctor I have had an amazing hundred years in so many ways. All the things I've done with the time you gave me. It's not that I _can't_ do certain things, I like to see it that it's more like now I _can._ There are things I couldn't do before. I've had so many opportunities. Its only right that there are some sacrifices to balance it.'

She saw the muscles in his jaw clench and he scratched at his scalp, messing his hair, 'I don't know…' he said, 'I don't know any more, I want to believe you.' Clara sat back a little to watch him, his frustration at himself clear in his face.

'Doctor I wouldn't lie to you about this.'

'Wouldn't you?,' he said suddenly, 'Because you seemed pretty convincing when we made love, if I wasn't a telepath I'd never have known. You've obviously had some practice.'

She slapped him, she slapped him even as she sat on his lap and then she erupted. 'Shut up, shut up it's not like that at all. What's the matter with you to be so cruel? I had to leave you behind. I didn't want to but we didn't have much of a choice. Do you know how hard that was, to finally tell you exactly how I felt, to have you say the same to me in the Cloisters and then to be ripped apart? To have you lie _to me_ that day in the diner pretending you'd forgotten, cutting me loose? I listened to the whole story of how you loved me and I let you walk out that door.'

The Doctor winced.

'What was I supposed to do?' Clara continued 'Where was I supposed to go? How was I supposed to cope with that feeling? I still remembered, I didn't know you did too. I thought I'd done the right thing and you were ok. I thought I'd never see you again, I thought you were gone for good and I had all this future ahead of me. I'm sorry but I got lonely. I waited and waited and then I reached out to a couple of people. Two if you must know, two in all that time. I just wanted to feel something. Not something physical, I wanted a connection. I'm human. I might be older than I should be but I'm still human and I have human needs. I missed you so much, Doctor, I missed you. Not adventures, not space and time and not sex because we were never about that, I missed loving you and I wanted to feel like that again. I felt like that today, with you, I felt part of you again, I missed you and now you're here and it was _real_.'

Clara stopped, feeling stung. Her eyes burned.

'I'm sorry,' the Doctor said.

'I wasn't faking anything,' Clara said quietly. 'What we did today was wonderful; just in a different way from what you expected. The earth didn't move, so what, that doesn't matter, I felt loved.'

'I feel like I've used you…' he said quietly. 'I feel like you should have stopped me. You should have told me, Clara.'

'I wanted you, I wanted to make love, I wanted to be close to you, please don't complicate it any more than it already is.'

Clara felt him shift again and reluctantly untangled herself from his limbs to sit beside him. She gazed out over the pond while the Doctor sat in silence. She could hear his breathing from where she sat, something which was always easier ever since she stopped breathing herself. No breaths or heartbeat to distract her, her hearing had become sharper to her environment. She'd found it pretty useful at first; right now she wished she couldn't track his emotions through his irregular inhalations.

'I wasn't alone either,' he said suddenly, his tone low.

Clara looked across at him and at the difficulty he was having telling her.

'After you… flew off,' he said, 'I spent a lot of time in the TARDIS, hiding,' he admitted. 'She was getting sick of me hanging about, decided I needed a kick up the arse and dumped me in a human colony.'

Clara snorted, 'She always takes you where you need to be.'

'Yes well sometimes she's right,' he conceded with a smile. She felt him reach for one of her hands, rub his thumb along her knuckles apologetically. Clara returned the gesture with a squeeze. 'Anyway it turned out someone I knew was on that planet too.'

'Oh? Who?'

'Ah…. River,' he said quickly and flicked his eyes up to meet hers a little guiltily then looked out over the pond.

Clara smiled at him, 'River as in your wife River?'

'Yes… look Clara…' he moved to explain.

'Did you spend some time with her?'

'I… yes… I did. I. We… I mean we were married obviously and…'

'Were you happy?' Clara watched him with a steady open gaze.

'Yes,' he admitted as though it was a surprise to himself. 'I mean I knew it couldn't last forever but I also knew it could last a while and I didn't want to miss that. Again I mean. I didn't want to lose something because I was fighting so hard to keep it.'

Clara felt her eyes grow wet, 'So you stuck around for a bit.'

'Twenty four years or so…'

'Oh!' Clara said with a grin, 'That's quite a bit, I don't think you've ever stayed anywhere that long! Well done you.'

'Clara…'

'No, really,' she clasped their joined hands together with her other hand. 'The Doctor I knew before would have run. He was so frightened of losing people, so sick of loss. He wouldn't allow himself to be happy now because he might be sad later. And you _were_ happy weren't you?' she studied his eyes with a sense of satisfaction. 'You've changed,' she said firmly, 'But for the better.'

She watched as a look of relief washed over him.

'I have,' he said, 'It's not just the beard.'

Clara stroked it softly. 'I am _proud_ of you, Doctor.'

'And I am proud of you Clara Oswald,' he replied hoarsely. She wiped at her eyes. 'And apparently your odd physiology allows you to cry at least,' he said kindly.

She giggled, 'Yes… of all the things it left me with I got that. And weirdly sneezing.'

The Doctor kissed her hand. 'What now?' he asked.

'Do you think we can start from scratch? I mean can we even consider it?' Clara asked, 'There's a lot of water has gone under the bridge, we've learned a lot of things between us. I know it' so complicated, but…' she trailed off, 'I just want it so much.'

He considered the proposal as he watched their hands entwined, his lips pressed together to try and contain emotion. Knowing when he was like this he needed space to collect himself, Clara looked instead for the wildlife to distract her, but the sun had long since set and instead the park was still around them. There were paths, illuminated by ornate streetlamps on the other side of the pond but no people. It crossed her mind as odd again and for the sake of a safe topic opened with a question.

'Doctor why are there no people here?'

'Given what we've been doing why would you want there to be?'

Clara chuckled. There was a note of humour to his voice, just a little and it reassured her.

'Ok, yes that is a point, but it's odd don't you think?'

'Why is it odd?'

'Well where are we? It looks a bit like Regents Park but not quite.'

'That's because it is Regents Park but not quite. Extra Cherry Trees.'

'Doctor just tell me where we are.'

'Regents Park but not quite, with no people,' he said, 'On the hard light deck of the TARDIS.'

'On the…. It's a hologram isn't it Doctor?'

'Yes,' he admitted. 'When I materialised around your TARDIS I couldn't park her anywhere. I mean it's a whole Diner, I could just stick her in the console room. You're lucky I have an infinite ship.'

'You could have just parked her in the bowling alley or a storeroom or something.'

'Bit boring isn't it? Waking up in a storeroom? This was much prettier and anyway gave me somewhere to wait.'

'It's very detailed.'

'I spend a lot of time here.'

'Doing what? Sketching?' she reached for one of his abandoned sketchpads and squinted at it in the poor light. She could make out very little but the shape of a face or a figure.

'Remembering,' he said vaguely. Clara looked up at him as he took the pad from her. 'Come on,' he said, 'The magic is lost now you know it's all pretend and we still have to work out what to do.'

The Doctor stood and gathered his abandoned coat and belongings, brushed the cherry blossom from them and held out his hand to her.

'Doctor…'

The sky suddenly brightened and beneath her feet the grass vanished to be replaced with a hard white tile. Clara blinked and the room was as sterile as any clinic, stretched at least the length of a football pitch and populated only by her Diner some distance away. She turned to face the trundling noise behind her and watched K-9 approach over the tiles. A door opened on one wall.

'Come on,' the Doctor gestured to the robot, 'Play time is over.' He made for the exit with his little companion alongside and a sketchpad under one arm. Clara caught a glimpse of the portrait as he stepped over the threshold into the corridors of his TARDIS. He had been working on it as she had emerged from the diner and he'd drawn her as a waitress, leaning on the bar, serving lemonade one hundred years before.

Every detail was accurate.


	4. Chapter 4

'I don't suppose you want a cup of coffee?' the Doctor asked as they wended their way through the old TARDIS corridors. 'I mean I know you don't _need_ one but…'

'I can still drink coffee Doctor I just don't _have_ to drink coffee, or anything else.' She glanced again at her portrait under his arm. Was this really how he spent his time? Sketching his memories of her under the ghost of a cherry tree? She was suddenly concerned that the relaxed and matured Doctor she had spent the last few hours with was more fragile than he looked.

'Hmm… I'm not sure I'm ever going to be comfortable with that,' he was saying. 'You, not eating and so on… just reminds me that…'

Clara rubbed his arm as they walked, 'Nonsense,' she cut in, 'You'll get used to it,' she said lightly. 'What's a cup of coffee? It's all how you look at it. Technically I _can_ eat anything I want and never get fat.'

He chuckled at that so she continued, trying to pry out the splinter of sadness she'd discovered in him.

'I never get sick, and I never need the loo, that's a bonus when you're in a strange place,' Clara went on, 'No, don't ask me how that works I have no idea and frankly I don't want to go into detail.' The Doctor pulled a face and she laughed. 'And I never _ever_ need to sleep, I am _Queen_ of the boxset marathon. I once watched all of _Supernatural_ in one go, all fifteen series,' she added proudly.

'I can see you've spent your time well,' the Doctor said drily. Clara batted him playfully when she saw the smirk on his face.

'Can't be action all the time, you know, everyone needs off days,' she said, relieved that he seemed happier.

'Maybe but for the first time it sounds like I'm going to need more than you, I'll never keep up the pace,' he said.

They rounded a corner and came to one of the TARDIS's many kitchens, this one a rather stylish modern affair with black granite work surfaces. Clara let her fingers trail over them as she wandered about. She watched the Doctor as he put down his sketch books and quickly hid their content before he found himself coffee. It was hard to read his expression as he went about it. She glanced again at her hidden picture, wondering why he didn't just show it to her.

'You really didn't forget anything did you?' Clara said, her hand on the sketchpad to invite him to show and tell.

'No, not a thing,' he said looking pointedly into his cup, 'Time Lord memories, Clara, Time lord brains. Takes more than a faulty neural block to mess with those. We have all of time and space at our finger tips, we see the past, present and future every day, a little gadget just isn't going to cut it.'

'Did you ever wish it had? Did you ever with you could forget?' she asked, drawing up a chair opposite him at the table.

He struggled for a moment with the question, drawing his teeth over his lower lip and wrapping his hands protectively around his coffee. 'Honestly?' he asked looking up.

'Honestly.'

'Sometimes,' he admitted. 'Sometimes it would cross my mind, even before Gallifrey and the neural block. There were times, in the confession dial, when your loss was unbearable and I would have done anything to forget. I would have considered it a mercy. There were times after we parted I felt like that too. A different type of grief, you were no longer dead but you were not with me either. I couldn't decide sometimes if it was worse or better,' he looked up briefly, 'I've since decided on better obviously, ' he remarked.

'The thing is Clara I often thought about it, about the freedom and peace it would bring, but I could never do it if the opportunity arose. No, I would never have the courage for that. I just had to hang on in there until the memories became a little less painful.'

'When did that happen?'

'I'm still waiting,' he confessed with a small smile. 'But I had to keep them safe, they were all I had. Better those and some pain than nothing at all of you.'

Clara put one hand over his. 'Doctor it's been a century, we're not on Trap Street now.'

'It's still out there, it's still to come.'

'One day… but not yet. Doctor I will chose when that day will be, it's a fixed point to return to but when I do it, that's up to me. In an odd way it offers me some protection, I'm not likely to die if my death is already predetermined. I'm a lot less vulnerable and human, I can't drown or bleed to death. You don't need to worry about me all the time….' She smiled at him.

'I will always worry about you Clara, that much hasn't changed,'

'So worry about me here… _with_ me… not catching glimpses of my whereabouts on a sneaky monitor and wondering if I am ok…'

The Doctor looked away embarrassed and she laughed.

'It's ok,' she said. 'Look the way I see it is, I'm semi immortal, so are you, we're equals now when it comes to possible deaths. I've been all over the place and managed to survive the last hundred years so that should give you some confidence. You've done your own bit of growing and changing and accepting. Right?' she asked suddenly needing him to confirm it; when he didn't she tried again. 'Doctor. Dare I say it, if something happened to one of us…'

'Don't…' he said quietly, a sharpness to his tone.

'If something happened to one of us, we _would_ cope…' she persisted.

'Would we?'

'You lost River, and it must have hurt like hell, but you coped.'

'That's different.'

'It's someone you loved.'

'Yes but it's not _you,_ Clara,' he looked up at her again. 'There are different forms of love but there isn't a word invented for what you are to me. I'm not going to sit here and spout romantic hyperbole, but it's sufficient to say the prospect of losing you…' he stopped, his voice betraying him so that he couldn't even say the words. Clara squeezed his hand again until he recovered. 'You are part of me, Clara, my best friend, my first face. You're in my timestream, you might as well be in my DNA. You're quite literally the reason I exist and the universe is still in one piece but all of that feeling, it's dangerous, you could be the reason nothing exists ever again.'

'I thought you weren't going to do hyperbole?' she said gently.

'That's just it, I'm not. This is just truth.'

'Doctor, I don't want to leave again,' Clara said soundly cutting through his uncertainty. 'I want us to try and trust ourselves to do the right thing, to have learned the lessons from the past. I want us to be together.'

'So do I but…'

'Don't we deserve a little of this? Just a little?'

The Doctor downed the rest of his coffee and sighed as Clara moved around the table to where he sat. He pulled her into his arms until their faces were level.

'Is this really what you want Clara?' he asked and she nodded, 'Really? You can trust me?'

'Of course I can trust you. I believe in you. I believe you learned from what happened and you've loved and lost since and you just need to have faith. Like me, I have faith in you.'

'I've always had faith in you Clara, I'm the one who is the weak link when it comes to these things. Now you're here I can feel myself weakening again. I'd do anything for you, Clara, how can you trust me when I feel like that?'

'Stop. Just stop.'

He held her close and she could feel his heartbeats against her chest. It was almost as though one of them was her own and he had warmed her frozen heart back to life.

'So what's it to be?' she asked. 'Can I stay?'

'Oh Clara I can never say no to you, not for long anyway,' he said a little sadly.

She kissed his nose.

'You're really certain this is what you want?' he checked, 'Running round Time and Space in a blue box with an old man?'

'I'm old too.'

He looked at her doubtfully.

'Ok I'm not as ancient as you are,' she argued and he laughed at her, the veil of sadness lifting again, 'And who says we are using your TARDIS,' she went on, 'what's wrong with mine?'

'It's too big and obvious, anyway you'll hurt the old girl's feelings if we dump her for a new one.'

There was a strong flicker in the lighting to confirm his suspicions. Clara giggled.

'Ok, we'll use yours,' she said, 'And this _is_ what I want. I promise I won't destroy the universe if something bad happens.' She made a cross sign over her heart 'Does it count if it's not beating?' she teased.

'Clara it isn't funny, none of it is funny, I've been living with it too long. Some of the things you're saying…'

'It's time to forgive yourself, Doctor and properly move on, keep up the learning process. We've both survived the last hundred years and all it has given us to deal with, now we're together again. A series of random incidents, and of course you stalking me now and then, has thrown us back into the mix with one another. It's Fate. I've decided.' Clara wrapped both arms around him and pulled him close until their noses touched. 'And I love you,' she said softly bringing her hands to his face, 'I think we can do this now. I think we can be OK.'

She saw him take a breath as though to argue further and then something in his eyes gave way and she felt him press his lips to hers, brush the soft hair of his beard across her chin. Clara pushed her hands through his hair, over is back and finally inside his hoodie again, their kiss deepening. She could feel his heart rate picking up under her palms and the speed and depth of his breathing. He pressed harder against her, where she stood between his legs, until she could feel him against her hip, firm and ready. For the first time in a long time she wished she could feel what he was feeling, that the blood would pump through her veins for just a moment so that memories of arousal could become real again. She dropped her hands to his lap, determined that at least one of them could feel that moment properly when his hands caught her wrists.

'Doctor…'

'No,' he said and her shoulders sagged. 'It doesn't feel right knowing you can't feel anything physical from it.'

'But I can _feel_ _emotions_ …'

'You were wishing you could feel more. You were more than wishing, you were longing,' he looked at her steadily, 'Telepath, remember?'

'Oh…'

He pulled her back to him and kissed her lips softly, his tell tale hearts still hammering.

'Doctor?' she asked as he absently rubbed her back.

'Hmm?'

'One of the things I was wishing was that I could feel what you were feeling.'

'Yes?'

'Is that possible, I mean with the telepathy?'

'It's the wrong way round, you'd have to read me, not the other way round.'

'Isn't there some way to create a sort of telepathic feedback loop?' she asked only half seriously. She knew nothing about telepathy but the idea amused her and investigating the possibilities might encourage him to allow her to touch him. Who knew she might get a pleasant surprise.

The Doctor drew back from her a second and frowned.

'I mean you've been to Telepath School right? There must be a way, it could be fun trying? '

He looked at her curiously and then she saw him started to ponder the question. His face wore the same expression she had seen a hundred times when he was debating how best to save a planet and it tickled her; his great brain focused on the conundrum that was Clara Oswald's time frozen physiology. He appeared to be working through the problem in his mind for a moment, almost forming a word before he pouted thoughtfully. 'Do you know I think there might be a way of doing this, perhaps do more? I'm thinking telekinesis rather than straight telepathy.'

'Ooo... sounds kinky,' she teased and he rolled his eyes.

'Clara I'm trying to be a good man here, I'm trying not to… I mean to be considerate and...'

'Yes, I know,' she ruffled his hair, 'God, will you _please_ relax.'

'I've wanted this a long time, Clara, I don't want to spoil things by making a mistake this early,' he said seriously.

She kissed him firmly, smiling hard, 'You won't, I'm not going anywhere you daft old man.'

The flash of pain in his eyes almost knocked the wind from her, if she had any breath. He looked utterly destroyed by her statement of reassurance. A look close to one of horror crossed his face.

'Please don't say that,' he said softly, sliding from his chair, 'Don't ever tell me you'll never leave again.'

He was gone before she could respond. Clara stood in the centre of the kitchen wondering quite what the significance of her words had been to him. She had always known a vulnerable side to him but she had never been quite so privy to it before. Just how much had he kept from her when they had travelled together? How often had casual remarks hurt him? If he had always felt these feelings for her had she unknowingly trampled on them?

'Just give him some time,' she told herself and the empty room and the lights pulsed in agreement, 'You've both just been hurled back into each other lives. You've both experienced _stuff_ since you were last together, there's all sorts floating about that needs sorting, talking about, just take it easy. Loads of time.' She had just about calmed her thoughts down when the Cloister bell rang out.

'Every time,' she said, 'Every time! I can see you haven't changed,' she gestured at the room around her angrily, 'We need peace and quiet not an impending disaster. I do not want to rescue any planets right now!' She stood with petulant hands on hips until K-9 came trundling urgently up to her feet and spun on the spot barking robotically, 'Oh what is it?!'

Clara stormed out of the room and almost immediately hit the console room as the TARDIS had moved the kitchen close to it. The Doctor was already leaning over the keyboard and glancing above at the monitor. The usual Gallifreyan spherical shapes drifted across the screen but Clara had learned enough from driving her own TARDIS to recognise the symbols for 'emergency status' and 'warning.'

'What's going on?' Clara said loudly over the racket.

'I think we're going to have to try out your theory that we can work together without destroying the universe, sooner rather than later,' he replied hauling the monitor round so that she could see. 'Fate has thrown us together you say? Well it's also thrown this in our path. Medium sized moon about to impact into this planet here,' he pointed. Clara looked at the screen where a purple gaseous moon appear to be on a trajectory with a greenish blue planet.

'Happens all the time in space Doctor, things collide with one another, comets and moons, it's how solar systems grow and change.'

'Yes but this is a little different…' he explained, hitting some buttons, 'ethically speaking.'

'Ethically speaking?'

He turned and faced her as the Cloister Bell suddenly stopped ringing. The TARDIS lights switched from red to white.

'They're both populated Clara,' he said, 'By sworn enemies. And both of them will be wiped out unless we can get them to work together.'

Clara shifted her weight from one foot to the other and blew a stray hair out of her eyes.

'Nothing's ever simple round here is it?' she said.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

'Umm… where are you going?' Clara called in confusion as the Doctor swept past her and down the corridor. 'Aren't we going to…'she looked back at the screens where the planet and moon played out various scenarios and possibilities. Crashing into each other, missing one another by miles and causing massive tidal waves, and finally the moon being blasted into millions of tiny pieces which came raining down on the planet causing widespread fires and destruction. None of the options looked too promising and all of them looked imminent if they didn't act soon.

'Doctor!'

She trotted after him and on instinct took a sharp left to a corridor with a heavy steel door at one end. The Doctor had one hand on it, 'Well come on,' he gestured, with the slight impatience with humans that she remembered so well, and he swung the door open. Knocked off course and rather befuddled that apparently they weren't flying to the planet immediately, Clara followed him inside.

She stopped in her tracks and immediately covered her mouth to try and suppress a laugh. Sadly she didn't quite manage it and the Doctor turned at her suffocated chortle and raised his considerable eyebrows at her owlishly.

'What? What's so funny?'

'This,' she managed flapping her free hand around her, 'You're not seriously telling me you built this for purpose?'

'What? What's wrong with it?' He gestured to the room. It was of medium size, bright and equipped with various monitors and scanners, and in the centre was a large flat surface with facilities therein for holographic projection. He hit a button and the moon and planet she had seen in the console room began to spin peacefully in their orbits about two feet off the table.

'It's… it's a War Room, it's like something out of a cold war movie, I'm surprised you don't have little TARDISes you can poke round the table with long sticks, little Dalek fleet ships,' Clara giggled, 'What is this, 'Doctor HQ,' have you been missing UNIT?'

He glared at her. 'It's a strategy room, not a war room. I don't do war.'

'What do you need a strategy for then?' she trailed her hand round the table. On closer inspection it seemed to be decorated with maps of far flung galaxies with tiny twinkling lights for stars.

'Things,' he said vaguely. 'In case an unavoidable thing comes up, which it still does now and then,' he explained.

'So you have a strategy for a thing now? You?'

'I always had a strategy,' he said defensively.

'No you didn't that was half the fun. You just sort of fell into things and then found a way out by luck. It was spontaneous, it was pure adventure!' Clara enthused as he stood by being prickly.

'Yes that was the problem I relied a bit too much on luck and not judgement. Something had to change Clara.' He was suddenly looking at her so seriously that her fit of giggles ended abruptly. She remembered how he'd sounded when she said she'd never leave him again. It was all so close to the surface.

'OK, OK, sorry,' she composed herself, 'That's the problem with being frozen in time a second before death, you know it's coming and you end up frozen with a body full of adrenaline and…well… I've been known to just chuck myself in there a bit too recklessly as a result. I'm not big with the strategy.'

'You were always like that Clara, it's not new. You went native long before you…' he looked pained, 'You..'

'Died,' she finished for him.

'Yes. The signs were there yes. You could be reckless.'

'Maybe, that's a debate for later. But this trip isn't reckless,' she tried to persuade him, 'It's information gathering. We need to go down there.'

'No. Not yet.'

'You mean to say we're going waste time?' she asked, 'What if there isn't time to waste? That moon looks pretty keen on crashing.'

'We're in a time machine, we don't have to rush anything, if it crashes before we find out a way to stop it, we can hop back a few days and start the process again.'

Clara looked at him like she no longer recognised him, 'Err… Technically yes, but isn't that against the rules? I mean something like that's likely to be a fixed point? We can't just reset it. And even if it isn't fixed I don't feel entirely comfortable with watching those two lumps of rock destroy each other and all the people on them while we…we… what are we doing?'

'We're researching.'

'Researching?' Clara looked at him aghast. 'Researching what?'

'The populations, their history, their relationship to each other, if there's any way we can persuade either side to…'

'Shut up! Just shut up a minute. You are telling me that rather than nip down to the planet and simply speak with the population there you are going to do bookwork…?'

'Initially yes… obviously then we'll pay them a visit but this way Clara we'll be better prepared, safer, we won't get caught out, captured… you know how it goes. Someone always gets captured. Or worse.'

Clara looked at him in stunned amazement.

'Ok,' she said at last, 'Who are you? Really who are you because this isn't how we used to…' she stopped and bit her tongue hard.

The Doctor had turned his back to her and was removing his hoodie, his skin bare and pale beneath, taut over a thin layer of muscle. With his head bowed he pulled the sleeves from his wrists and dumped the clothing to one side as he opened a cupboard door beside him. Clara watched as he extracted a clean white shirt and the velvet jacket she had left for him all those years ago. Not a copy or replacement, it was obvious from the threadbare cuffs and frayed seams that this was the same one.

She felt a sudden sting of sorrow as she watched him dress. He looked so human and fragile in the cold light of the room. There were shadows beneath his eyes she hadn't noted until now. She could see the fine hair on his arms and the sprinkling on his chest as he buttoned up the shirt. She watched his long fingers work on them and noted how slim his wrists were. Slim. Breakable.

I'm less breakable than you, he'd said the night the Raven came.

'I'm the Doctor,' he said quietly, noticing her watching him as he slipped the jacket on and attempted to brush down the cuffs with little success, 'Still the Doctor,' he smiled at her gently, 'I just have to do things a little differently now.'

She frowned at the sense of melancholy he cast over the room. She had been so overjoyed to see him. To touch him and be with him on the holodeck. Now that they were here, about to go on another adventure with each other there was more doubt, worry, and history in the air than she could measure. And he was feeling it. He was really feeling it.

'Doctor?'

'Yes,' he returned to the central table.

'After River, what did you do with yourself all those years?'

'Oh you know, a bit of grieving, a bit of naval gazing,' he typed in some queries on the keyboard in front of him.

'What about planet saving, adventures? What about finding a new companion, a friend to see the universe with?'

He ignored her, spun a monitor towards her.

'Doctor?'

'It's just been a bit of a different pace Clara,' he said in irritation, 'What happened with you, it was bound to alter things. I don't care what you say Clara,' he stopped her before she could get the words out, 'I had to learn to run alone most of the time and it was for the best. I've probably avoided killing off a couple of companions at least.'

'Your companions choose to be with you Doctor, they choose that life, I chose it.'

'Stop, I don't want to discuss this now.'

'I thought you'd turned it all around when you told me about River,' Clara pushed. 'How you had allowed yourself to love and lose someone. But you didn't really did you?'

'No, I did. I loved her, I enjoyed our time together and I did learn how to let go, you taught me that,' he clarified, 'Letting go isn't a problem anymore.'

'It doesn't tend to be unless you're willing to hold onto something,' Clara said and she could swear he almost flinched. She watched his profile and the light of the hologram planet sparkling in his eyes. Like the Not Quite Regents Park it was superficial, a sad lifelessness beneath the image, deadening it. She crossed the room to where he stood and stroked the threadbare cuff of his jacket curiously. 'So you put this on when you need to be the Doctor and you what? Spend the rest of your time in your make believe park sketching? That's a pretty lonely existence.'

He looked sharply at her.

'Maybe, maybe not. But this way no one gets hurt. Including me.' There was a pause and he turned his attention back to the screen. 'Two populations, radically different in their level of civilisation and their evolution but rooted in the same genepool,' he said. 'No great history of widespread conflict between them and others but tensions have always run high between themselves.'

'So two tribes that would rather kill each other than us,' Clara said, 'That's a good thing, means we can pay a visit. Come on,' she headed for the door.

'Clara, we need to know more,' he said as he followed a few paces behind. 'Like why they splintered in the first place. Like the exact political situation…'

'You know the quickest way to do that is to go there,' Clara said, her patience wearing thin as she hit the console room. He trailed after her. 'And the most efficient way is for me to take the moon and you to take the planet. Even the TARDIS agrees,' the machine hummed around her but immediately brought up the needed co-ordinates on screen.

The Doctor made spluttering noises of protest and Clara held up her hands, business like and practiced. 'We have two time machines Doctor, let's split up, take a look, set a time to meet back on the TARDIS and share info.'

'Don't you think…' he started.

'Or… Headsets, we need headsets,' Clara said and scuttled down below deck for a moment to where she suspected the TARDIS might be hiding some. 'We can exchange important information as we go and it will also reassure you that everything is OK…'

'Reassure me?' Why do I need reassuring?' the Doctor asked as she re-emerged untangling the equipment and handing him one.

'Seriously? Why? Because you have that terrified look on your face that it's all going to go wrong and it will somehow all be your fault because you…' she took a deep breath and let it go with a sigh. Kindness spread over her features, 'Because I'm willing to believe a hundred years on and despite everything, you still think you have a duty of care.'

She watched him glance down, fiddle with the button of his coat. She noticed the thread was coming away from it as it twisted loosely in his fingers. She suddenly desperately wanted to mend it.

'Why do you always say it like it's a bad thing?' he asked softly.

'You know why.'

'I'm not sure I can do this… without… without…'

'Without becoming a power mad reckless destroyer of the universe in my name?'

He glanced up at her and appeared to be debating whether to laugh or cry at the statement. Clara wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him near. Pressed her lips to his. If in doubt, kiss him.

'I'm not being flippant. We have to do this. We have to give this a go. What's the alternative? We go our separate ways again because we're scared we can't trust ourselves?'

'I don't want to live without you again,' he admitted quietly, his mouth close to hers.

'Good now put your headset on and punch some buttons. I'll take the moon, like I said. Synchronise watches!'

Despite himself he chuckled and received a smile in return.

'I can't believe I'm letting you go down there alone,' he said.

'I'll take K-9 with me if it makes you feel better,' she said and received a doubtful look. 'Listen I've done a lot of things alone in the last century Doctor but I'm not as fragile as you think. I'm the same me, I haven't aged or changed in that way externally, but I've seen a lot more, learned a lot more. It's like… it's like the cherry trees in your hologram.'

He cocked an eyebrow at her, 'Oh?'

'Yeah,' she leaned back and looked at him, 'Every year the cherry trees produce that blossom, every year they look the same. And you sit under them and watch it fall thinking another spring is gone and how transient and frail it is, and every year you feel sad. But it's not frail at all because all the while the tree keeps growing….'

'Ready to blossom again,' he finished.

'And every year is as beautiful as the last, if not more so,' she winked, 'and the older the tree, the better the fruit?' she wrinkled her nose. 'Does that work?' he lowered his eyebrows at her and mouthed 'what?' Clara giggled, 'and… I'm losing it now aren't it?'

'Yes,' he agreed with a laugh.

'But score one for trying for a romantic metaphor?' she said hopefully and slipped her arms back to squeezed his hands briefly. Her eyes glittered with barely supressed excitement. 'Now come on, let's go, let's go!' she encouraged.

'Allons-y,' he said quietly in return.

He seemed to relax and she watched him put his headset on and charge a few buttons on the console before making her way back to her diner still parked in the huge white holodeck, K-9 tagging along for the ride. She could easily manifest back within the TARDIS again later, right now adventure was calling her. Her last one had led her to be rescued by the Doctor so not only did she feel she'd left something half done but she needed to prove herself too. She hoped it would do a lot to allay his fears if she could play the hero today.

Who was she kidding he would still worry, but she did still get that buzz from the idea of a trip to a moon. She had lost so many feelings she had taken for granted when she was 'alive,' this was one of the few she could still count on. She walked with an extra spring in her stepped and giggle to herself, a giddy combination of adventure plus sex with a time lord. It was an odd kind of day. Despite her protests at the imminent planet disaster ruining it, she felt sure it could still pan out well.

Clara had meant it when she had told the Doctor that she was on a permanent adrenaline high. It was a side effect of being frozen that she didn't much mind. A feeling of something near elation. Confidence and excitement, optimism and sharp thinking. It could and did alarm her companion Ashildr from time to time, and she had more than once had to rein her in but generally speaking Clara got through things, managed situations and saved lives. It would be draining for anyone without that extra squirt of adrenaline. At times even Ashildr just needed a break from the hectic pace of it all and Clara knew she had a reputation for being reckless which was beginning to spread much like the Doctor's own tales.

But wasn't that how it was supposed to be? When you lived this kind of life?

She entered the diner looking for something in particular on the counter, grabbed it, and headed for the console room door putting on her sonic sunglasses. She just had a fancy, a craving, it happened sometimes. She didn't need to eat or drink but sometimes the taste and texture lured her. This one was tame compared to the peanut butter and blue cheese concoctions she had made last week. She thought of fish fingers and custard and laughed. She had a long way to go to that but she was beginning to understand the necessity of experimenting with food. When you've lived 100 years too long nothing really tasted new anymore. It was forever since she had one of these things though. Clara took a gritty juicy bite of her prize and prodded a few levers, programmed her machine effortlessly.

Run, laugh, live. Wasn't that what he had told her himself, to run like hell, to laugh? Wasn't she supposed to embrace the whole deal, just as he always had? And now he was here again and he was more afraid than her. He'd shut himself away for decades in his TARDIS only getting his Doctor persona out on special occasions when the most world ending disasters reared their ugly heads. It was like he was semi-retired. And she didn't think it suited him.

The console door swung shut behind her and in moments the TARDIS was taking off. Clara watched its progress on her monitors and thought of the Doctor. Oh how he had changed a little for the better, some for the worse and how he had stayed the same. Of how vulnerable, how breakable, he seemed and how much she felt he needed her. She knew somewhere inside his sense of adventure still bubbled. He'd just had a massive confidence knock and that was largely her fault and maybe now she could repay that debt and make things better. Maybe now they could start over, and she could help him. She used to be his carer, she wanted that again.

She had a duty of care.

She froze as the words drifted though her head, chewed carefully.

A duty of care. Was that how she thought these days? No they weren't the right words, those had been his words when he couldn't face the truth of it. She could translate and use her own. She loved him, she wanted him to be happy, she wanted them both to be happy. Together.

The TARDIS engines sounded their landing and Clara wiped the trickle of pear juice off her chin suddenly hating the feel of it. She stood looking at the fruit in her hand and finally tossed it aside before she cleaned her palms on her trousers with distaste.

She suddenly found it unpleasantly sticky.


	6. Chapter 6

6.

'Right come on, you,' Clara signalled to K-9, 'Scan says there's a nice breathable atmosphere, and it's not too parky, let's go check it out.' She left the console room and crossed the diner, looking out across the landscape beyond before she pushed open the glass door.

'Radiation levels are high,' K-9 informed her.

'Oh… well that doesn't bother me, semi-immortality is a great defence against it. I'll be fine, I don't intend to be here long. Just keep an eye on it for me.'

'Affirmative.'

She could see the purple haze of atmosphere above her but the surface of the moon itself was dark enough to be almost black. It was almost entirely rock but scattered across it were some pools of what she assumed was water, for all she knew they could be acid, she didn't fancy dipping her toe anyway. There was also the most incredible amount of junk. Clara scanned with her glasses for anything of particular significance amongst the debris, and detected that there were greater amounts beyond a particularly large stack of rocky outcrops pitted with cracks and holes. Interested enough she began to make the journey, picking her way carefully through what looked like potholes on the moon's surface. K-9 trundled in curves and hoops to avoid them, bitterly complaining to itself as it went.

'Surface uneven,' clunk, 'K-9 is not equipped for this terrain,' clunk, whirl. It let out a mechanical growl.

Clara giggled and pressed a switch on her headset, 'Hey Doctor I think your dog is hating this, it's a bit bumpy for him.'

A fuzziness on the headset then the Doctor's voice, 'I don't know why, he's been upgraded to all terrain. He's 4 x 4.'

'Did you upgrade his personality too?' she joked.

'I'd never tinker with that,' she imagined his smile as she heard it in his voice. 'What's it like there?' he asked, the deep gravel of his tone somehow magnified by the technology. Clara was quite sure she'd have melted into a puddle if he had actually whispered it in her ear.

'Rocky,' she said suddenly wondering despite her love of adventures why she had been so keen to do this without him. It was nice, different but nice, to be able to openly admit what he did to her, to just be able to love him. She should be cherishing each moment now they were back together.

'And?' he asked.

'And… It sort of looks like a tip. A space tip.' She heard him snort at the description, their private joke tickling him after all this time, 'There's rubbish everywhere, mostly metals. And the place looks like it's been drilled or mined or something. There's caves and sink holes…. It all just feels a bit unstable. Background radiation is high according to the mutt.'

'What? Come back immediately then.' There was an uncharacteristic squeak of alarm to his voice which made her eyes widen.

'No need Doctor it more or less bounces off me now I'm frozen. Can't have an accumulative effect on cells in stasis…'

'We can't know that for sure. But we do know I'm able to tolerate higher overall levels than humans frozen or not…' he protested.

'Says the man who died and regenerated because of radiation.'

'When?'

'Your tenth…'

'Those were very extreme levels…'

'Shut up I'm here now, stop faffing over me' she said. 'Where are you?'

She heard him exhale a thoughtful 'um.'

'I've just landed by a very pleasant stream, suns out, grass is blue, all is well with the world,' he said unconvincingly.

'Really?' Clara rolled her eyes.

'Well apart from the huge purple shape in the sky headed towards us, yes. I take it you haven't entered our atmosphere though because you're not on fire. Yet. Likewise we haven't got any tidal waves but I would say it's all quite close… A day or two away at most.'

Clara swept her eyes over the horizon for some sign of civilisation, stubbed her toe and cursed, stumbled a little over a pothole. 'Where are all the people?' she asked, 'I resent doing this if there are no people who need rescuing, we had important things to do.'

'Must we?' he moaned. 'I'm all talked out…it's exhausting Clara, your need to talk about things…'

'We don't have to do talking, we can do something more… fun…' she suggested with a wicked tone.

'Clara, I told you, I feel bad about that…' his discomfort was evident even over the headset.

'I think I could make you feel better…telekinesis or no telekinesis. In fact I bet I could make you…'

'Shh concentrate, the residents of your moon must be around somewhere. Don't get distracted by our burgeoning romance.'

Clara grinned at his choice of words, 'Is that what it is, a romance?'

'Isn't that how you describe it?' he said and she could just about see his fluster as he defended himself, 'It has every element of classical romance. You teach literature, you should know,'

'I haven't taught for a hundred years,' she reminded him. 'I just didn't know if you would see it that way,' she said. 'You're not the most obviously romantic… I mean not the romantic gesture type at least…'

'Orient Express,' he said shortly.

'There was a monster on that.'

'It was a romantic setting…with…. A…'

'Monster,' she finished.

'Point of Interest, I'd say,' and she laughed again, trudged over some more rock. There was a comfortable pause in communication.

'You were beautiful,' he said from nowhere, 'I wish…'

'What do you wish?' she said quietly.

'I wish I could have told you that,' he said softly.

'You just did.'

'Yes a hundred years too late for you, much longer for me… you'd think I'd be better at timing. If I had told you maybe all of this could be avoided. Your death, my endless confession dial… wait…' His voice dipped lower. 'There's a village coming up here.'

'Typical. Why don't I have a village? I just have rocks,' Clara said in a bid to cover how emotional she felt.

'You picked the moon! Moons are rocky. Oh… look, natives… I hope they're friendly there's rather a lot of them.'

'What do they look like?' Clara stopped in her tracks and listened, pressing the earpiece as close as it could go to try and detect what was happening.

'People. I mean humanoid.'

'OK that's good I think. I mean makes it a bit easier to get them to trust you. Nothing worse than having to learn some weird tentacle based form of communication.'

'They're… very welcoming…' the Doctor said uneasily.

'You sound… out of breath?' Clara raised her eyebrows.

'Just busy being welcomed. Look I may need my full attention for this… oh thank you very much…'

'What are you doing?'

'I've just been given something to drink.'

'Well you can't drink it, it might be a trick!'

'I'm aware of that but,' more panting noises, 'I may not have much option… I'll um… I'll call you back.'

The headset went dead.

'Don't hang up! It's a headset not a phone it's supposed to stay on! Great. Is this how he used to feel when I was getting myself into bother?' she asked K-9.

'K-9 is unable to answer.'

'It wasn't an actual question, it was rhetorical,' Clara sighed. 'Oh, some use you are. Let's hurry this up and get back to the TARDIS. I don't like not knowing what he's doing. Call it my inner control freak.'

Clara marched towards the biggest outcrop of rocks purposefully and hauled herself to the top of them to peer over. She could hear K-9 crashing and banging his way around the obstruction to take the long route round. Ahead of them both lay what passed for the equivalent of a village on the moon. Small, flat roofed buildings tacked together in a line and glowing a little in the purplish light, a sort of burnished steel. At the side of the village closest to her Clara could see a larger building, with what looked like pointed wings to either side of it, and it took her a second to realise that under the layers of deterioration the thing was actually more like a ship.

One that had crashed a very long time ago and gradually fallen to pieces, been repatched and then decayed again. On closer inspection it appeared to still be inhabited.

Its pilot seemed to be sitting on board exactly where you'd expect him to be in the cockpit of the thing, like he hadn' t moved in decades. A wizened and extraordinarily ancient looking humanoid with a straggle of silver hair and clothes that appeared to have been patched as often as his ship.

He was looking right at her, or trying to a least.

Clara raised one of her hands cautiously and the creature hunkered forward in its seat squinting at her for a better view. It reached for an old pair of spectacles but then appeared after holding them at arm's length and trying to focus the image, to conclude that these were of no use. In the meantime Clara moved a little closer with K-9 at her heal.

'Um… hello,' she said waving slightly to help the ancient thing fix its focus onto her. 'My name's Clara, and this is my companion K-9.'

'Clara who?' it asked, creaking into a bent over standing position and incrementally slowly making its way out of the cockpit. Its limbs stuck like sticks from the sleeves of its top and out the bottom of its loose trousers.

'Just Clara.'

'What are you?'

'Human. I'm just passing through,' she said. 'With my friend, the Doctor. Our ships alerted us to what's happening with this moon.'

Having placed itself somewhat firmly on the rocky ground the ancient and skeletal thing looked up at her quickly.

'What do you know of it?' it snapped.

'Mainly that it's on a collision course with that planet,' she pointed over the horizon to the increasingly close blue green planet. 'We want to help. If the two of you collide you'll both be wiped out and our initial scans told us there are populations on both.'

'Hmm,' it said, 'there are. ' Clara watched as it turned its deeply lined face to her, the colour of tanned leather and the eyes quite white with cataracts.

'But for all you know of it that could be the best thing for them, there is a great deal of history between us. Perhaps they deserve to die, eh? My name is Varna, I am the most Aged of the Settlers here.'

Clara shuddered as the old man took her hand, but more from what he said about the population of the planet than physical contact. She attempted to smile. 'Varna, pleased to meet you, is there somewhere we can talk?'

He gestured over his hunched shoulder a little way into the village and Clara followed him with painstaking slowness to a dilapidated building populated with several more wizened looking humanoids. Glancing around that building and out into what served as a sort of village square it soon became clear that the fountain of youth wasn't exactly springing on this moon. As such Clara's appearance was drawing rather a lot of attention from those whose eyesight still functioned. As she was seated in the porch area of one building a small and unhurried crowd gradually began to build around her.

Everything appeared to have been recycled and everything looked old. From the drapes on the walls, to the darning on the residents clothes. Pipes were held together with primitive means, she could see tape and string working in place of nails and screws. At the same time however it was clear that there had once been better technology and better facilities. Monitors sat blankly gathering dust, Machinery silent and motionless propped up corners of loose tin walls. It was as though the inhabitants had been abandoned on the moon decades before and had been making do until someone came to their rescue.

After the bustle caused by her presence settled a little she made a move.

'Your moon is on a collision path,' she said to the assembled Ageds, 'It won't survive the impact and neither will any of you. We want to help you find a way to prevent this. How many of you are there?'

'Just fifty of us remain,' Varna started, 'When we first left Hydrasus, our planet, there were many many more. A selection of the great and good, artists, scientists, politicians. We came here to survive.'

Clara frowned, 'I don't understand, you were originally on the planet?'

'Yes,' Varna said, 'We are the same species as those left behind, or rather we were when we separated two hundred years ago. There was illness and death. A plague. It moved quickly through the population and we knew if we stayed there would be none of us left.. We did not have time to spare so those of us who could, those of us with means, left, came here. It went so wrong.'

'In what way?'

'We were so sure we would be able to go back, once the threat was over, once the disease stopped spreading. WE aimed to repopulate the planet with those from our superior gene pool. But a series of events….'

'Our ship crashed and the planets people did not die,' a voice came from behind her. 'We were stuck. The ones we abandoned did not all die and they resented us for leaving. We left them defenceless. The slaves and peasants. We saw the disease coming for us all and left them. It is no wonder they would not welcome us back nor provide us with the provisions we have fallen short of. They have every resource they could ever need, but no wit to use it. They are inferior to us and yet we are stuck here because they said no. They understand nothing but they control everything.'

Clara looked at the Ageds with something akin to horror. 'And now?' she asked.

'Time has passed and they have told their children lies,' Varna explained further, 'they wiped us from their memories and turned us instead into fables. I doubt the younger generations that walk the planet are even aware we are truly here, we are stories to them. We stopped communicating years ago, they made it quite clear to us we would never be welcome again… so be it. We would not want to return to a place like that...'

'But you're in pretty dire straits now,' Clara said trying to persuade them to see sense. 'And they are the nearest planet.'

'We will manage this without them. Our genius has allowed us to do everything we can to survive,' the second voice piped up again.

'Ah,' said Varna, 'Indeed. We have artificially elongated our lives but the radiation cloud has rendered us sterile. We will gradually die one by one until soon there will be none of us.' He hunkered forward to look closely at Clara. 'If we could get off his moon, start somewhere new, we would surely be able to find the answers to our problems. We have the intellect but we lack the facilities and resources.'

'Hydrasus is in danger too, can't you work together?' she asked. 'If we helped you to negotiate.' Clara asked Varna.

'They would kill us I think,' Varna said surprisingly lightly, 'They are primitive and they feel wronged.'

'It sounds like they were,' Clara observed coolly to the grumbling of the Ageds around her, 'But this might be the time to move on. Build bridges. My friend the Doctor is speaking with them. I'm going to assume they want to live as much as you.'

'I doubt they would ever accept us. I doubt they even want to. I wouldn't if I was them. What we did in the past…'

'Should be in the past,' Clara said.

'But if they found out, it would feed their hatred of us.'

'Found out what?'

'It is our doing that this moon…' Varna began.

'Be quiet, this is not needed,' the second voice said.

'What?' Clara asked.

Varna sighed. 'We have been trying to escape this moon for so long. We have mined every power source, grown what basic foods we can in the pitiful earth. There is nothing here now. We have dug so deep in the ground that the surface cracks around us and gravity has been distorted. The moon spins off centre.'

'What do you mean?' Clara asked.

'I mean it is our fault this moon is spinning out of control. If we hadn't mined so deeply, taken so much. But we did and it's too late now, we're on a path to Hydrasus.'

Clara considered momentarily. The higher classes of a race who abandoned the entire population of their planet to almost certain death, were now asking for her help to survive but had no desire to help those they had left behind in the first place. What's more they had caused the disaster that was now about to wipe out both populations but they still only wanted to save themselves.

She wondered if this was what the Doctor had meant by ethical approaches to the problem and taking time to research. It was more complex than it looked.

Ripples not tidal waves. Which would this be if she went ahead with any plan to give them aid? She was suddenly very unsure of what to do next.

'You said you wanted to help?' Varna said a hint of pressure in his voice. 'You must have a ship? A ship that brought you here. We could use that to go elsewhere, you would just be letting us join you for a short time until we resettled.'

Clara shook her head. 'That's not why I'm here, it's not an evacuation. I'm not just on one side, we're trying to help both populations.' Varna made an angry tsk noise and waved a hand at her but Clara persisted. 'This is about responsibility too, the moon spinning out of control?' It would still do that if you were on it or not and you caused that. The population of Hydrasus would still be at risk. Again.'

Varna's cold white eyes revealed nothing and Clara's gut had a sinking feeling. Something was telling her that self preservation was everything here. She also had the overwhelming urge to leave.

'Will you help us?'

'I need to work out how first,' she hedged. 'I need to go back to my ship, speak with the Doctor. Right now he's on the planet speaking to the ones you left behind.' There was a murmur of discontent. 'Maybe with our help you can find a way to work together, a way to at least talk. I'm not giving up on this yet...'

'You do not understand. We are Aged,' Varna said teeth slightly gritted, 'We have many years between us. I do not see how one as young as you could possibly help or find options we have not already thought of and dismissed.'

'Give me a chance, I'm older than I seem,' Clara smiled as she stood up. 'the Doctor is even older, and my friend Ashildr, well she's half the age of the universe and some.'

There was a sudden burble of interest around the room.

'Perhaps you should tell us your secret for such youthful looks, to your health,' a female Aged approached her intrigued, raising her fingers to Clara's face. 'How old are you?'

'One hundred and twenty nine.'

There was an impressed hum. Clara stepped towards the door.

'Youth, and long life and a ship,' someone said behind her, 'You are a blessed individual to have all of this at your fingertips.'

'Yes, but..' she turned slightly to face them and caught something moving out of the corner of her eye, but then it was gone again. The cluster of Aged faces was looking at her intently, hungrily and her uneasiness increased. She was about to argue that her youthful appearance was non transferable, that there was no magic potion. She wanted to make clear it was not as straight forward as it might seem and that there were huge sacrifices she had had to make, but the pain flared at the back of her head and she went down with a thud.


	7. Chapter 7

7.

Clara woke with her face pressed against the seat she lay curled on and carefully peeled her cheek away from its plastic feel surface. She knew immediately she was back in the booth of her diner but whoever had transported her there had done so with less courtesy than the Doctor. No blanket covered her for starters, but more significantly her hands were bound behind her back. She carefully opened an eye and squinted under the table into the booth opposite for any obvious threat, but saw nothing of note. Blowing her hair out of her face she made the decision to sit up.

The scene before her looked like a pensioners' tea party and the attendees were completely oblivious to this young gatecrasher. Clara's jaw dropped a little as she took in the sight of a dozen Ageds seated around her diner, gleefully helping themselves to burgers and lemonade which for some reason best known to itself her TARDIS was willingly supplying. Clara mentally glared at her sentient machine but received nothing back by means of explanation. The silence was the equivalent of an innocent whistle. In the meantime the sound of elderly cackling floated across the room, the squooshie of the fizzy drinks machine as it squirted into the tall glasses. Clara heard a thunk and the Juke Box groaned into life, belting out Hound Dog by Elvis Presley. It was at that point her eyes fell upon K-9.

'Oh my God what are you doing to him?' she attempted to rise to her feet but discovered her ankles were bound too, resulting in her hopping ineffectively in her seat. 'Get away from him this minute!'

The Aged who was hunched over the robot turned its face to her with a toothy grin. 'You're awake!' he greeted her happily, 'Good, now you can tell us how to dismantle this creature and how to get through that door,' he gestured to the door marked 'restrooms,' which lead to the console room and started painstakingly to straighten up. One thing for certain if Clara needed to make a run for it she could outpace these creatures, legs bound or not.

'No chance,' Clara huffed looking with concern at the prone robot. The Aged had turned him on his back and removed some of his underbelly plated covering. Wires and chips were exposed to the air, sparking as the Aged prodded them with a rusty screwdriver device. His outer case was splattered with what looked like mayonnaise and there was evidence of a half eaten chicken burger next to him. Clearly the experimental Aged had been tucking in while dissecting the robot. Clara fumed. K-9's eyelights were off and his tail motionless and the sight of it made Clara livid. That was the Doctor's pet, his companion over centuries, he loved the little cretin and she wasn't about to let these things fiddle with him for their ends. Only the Doctor got to tinker with his little tinker.

She bounced along the booth seat and hopped out the end, furious. 'Put that down!' she ordered the Aged.

He squared up to her best he could given his age and extensive kyphosis. He was at least four inches shorter than Clara which was very small indeed. 'Tell me how to get through the door and I will consider it!' he bargained.

Clara glanced at the door briefly wondering how to handle the situation. What did they think was in there, a ship or actual rest rooms? Well they weren't going to think a diner had magically materialised on their moon were they. They had to know it was a ship.

Creakily the Aged made his way closer, hauling himself along with the aid of one of the tables nearby. Around them some of the other Ageds had put down their chips and burgers long enough to notice she was conscious again and had tuned into the entertainment while wiping ketchup from wizened lips and hands. Stuck on the moon for as long as they had been, little communication with others even from their own species, this had to be the best entertainment they had witnessed in all that time. One of them poured some corn into the pop corn machine in preparation. It was then she noticed Varna making his way from behind her bar with a glass of strawberry milkshake. He took a long sip through the straw and grinned. This was getting really annoying.

'Stop that,' she said, 'Stop…eating everything!'

'I must say Clara your ship is rather unusual,' he said. 'We weren't sure we had found the right place at first. It's not very practical is it? How do you park it?'

'Why does everyone always ask that?' Clara growled.

'And besides its strange appearance,' he continued ignoring her, 'on the one hand it has been most hospitable in terms of welcoming us with food and drink. We appreciate it so much, so many years we have lived on the most basic of foodstuffs. Here there is even a menu and we can scarcely believe how wonderful these things taste.' He took a chip off a comrade's plater and savoured it, squashing it flat between his gums where he lacked sufficient teeth. His mouth made curious slapping noises and Clara shuddered a little.

'But on the other hand.' he said after a pause to swallow, we are unable to enter the control room which we suspect lies through there,' he pointed to the door. 'I suppose that's fair enough, there must be some security. Your ship perhaps only recognises you. What is it, voice control? Retinal scanning? DNA? Whatever it is now you are awake we can get the door open.'

He smiled again, soft bits of chip stuck in his beard.

'Not going to happen,' Clara said.

A few Ageds shuffled towards her. With their rags, their grey hair and their poor eyesight they appeared very much like tattered and weather-beaten owls peering at her wearily, blinking in the daylight.

'You said you wanted to help us,' Varna said.

'Yeah, I'm beginning to regret that,' Clara said straining at her wrist bindings.

'We want this ship, we want to escape this place and resettle elsewhere. If you play along you wont come to harm, you can accompany us for our journey and we might even give it back to you at the end,' Varna said, 'But if that isn't possible, if you and the ship don't comply, we will strip her of her resources instead. Starting with your robot.'

'The TARDIS won't let you touch her,' Clara said firmly, 'If she's shut the door she's shut the door. She opens it for no-one without my express permission, even those she recognises as friends,' she thought of the Doctor who had been forced to leave her in the booth. He was a friend but at the same time the TARDIS knew of their history and the potential problems being together could cause. She would wait for Clara's assent before allowing him in.

Varna looked at her with pale eyes. 'There must be a way,' he said, 'Let's see if we can find it boys!' he gestured to his ancient gang who began to slowly edge round the diner, peering at things that might or might not be switches, levers or significant controls. They tapped and pried at them with weak old muscles and breathlessly got nowhere. Clara had to stifle a laugh. The Aged take over wasn't going to be very fast.

However ridiculous it all seemed it was still frustrating. She wanted to get off this moon and she was upset about K-9. She was also aware of a female Aged staring at her with interest while her counterparts scoured for technology they might be able to use. Clara shifted uneasily and avoided the woman's gaze while she tried to unpick her bindings, surely they couldn't have tied them too tight, they weren't the strongest of creatures. The woman sucked noisily on her straw and smacked her lips while Clara continued for the best part of five minutes to undo her wrists. Eventually after seeing the woman hadn't found another form of entertainment she snapped.

'What? Why are you staring at me?'

'You look so young,' the Aged said simply, 'And yet you told us you weren't. What is it dear, a cream, a tincture? It's incredible.'

'It's nothing you can get your hands on,' Clara grumbled and managed to extract a couple of her fingers from the binding.

'Are you really human? Humans do not have such long and well preserved lifespans.'

'I'm human.'

'Not a half breed of some kind, mixed with another more aged species?'

'No, just human, old and human,' Clara grit her teeth and pulled hard at her wrists trying to yank them through the last loops of binding. It shifted a little but didn't give way. She let out a strangled noise of annoyance.

The woman didn't appear satisfied. 'I bet you have a laboratory in there,' she gestured to the firmly locked door, 'You seem the type. Inquisitive. I wonder what would happen if I ran a few experiments. I could sample DNA. Perhaps distilled exactly what it is in you that keeps you so… fresh. There might even be a way of inserting it into our own gene pool, reverse our sterility…' she became increasingly excited.

'Clara stopped her wriggling and looked up at her. 'Seriously? You're just being creepy now. You've been living on this moon too long. You really want to know what keeps me so 'fresh?'

'Yes!' the Aged couldn't not hide her note of enthusiasm and edged closer.

Clara leaned forward too until the old woman's rather stale breath hit her face. She looked her straight in the eye. 'The thing that keeps me young and fresh,' she said, 'isn't a potion or genetics.'

'What is it?' the Aged whispered keenly.

'Being dead,' Clara said. 'Being dead and frozen.'

The Aged's already crinkled face wrinkled further.

'What? That doesn't make sense, you cannot be dead. You speak move and breathe.'

'I don't really breathe it's a habit,' Clara said, 'I can assure you I'm very dead. Well very almost dead. I have about a second left to live. I'm suspended.'

'In stasis,' the Aged said, 'That makes no sense either, you are moving. Creatures in stasis don't move. I don't believe you. You are trying to trick me, through me off the scent.'

Clara finally wrenched herself free of the wrist bindings and grabbed the old woman's hand. She held it over her heart and waited. 'Feel anything?' she asked. Even after all this time she found it hard to be questioned extensively about her state of being. It was a sensitive topic littered with potential mines. Yes there were bonuses, yes she had learned to adapt to most of the issues, but when certain topics threatened to be raised she grew defensive, hurt and prickly. Talking about sterility, talking about the Aged using her genes to reverse the sterility the radiation had inflicted on them, well those were topics which pained her. The one thing Clara had always hoped for was a family and the one thing she could never , ever have was just that.

Clara pressed the palm of the Aged's hand closer to her chest. The woman's eyes widened and her mouth formed an empty 'O.' Clara looked at her, 'there will be no distilling any magical youth potions, no sequencing my DNA. My long life is mine alone,' she said, 'I had to die to be this pretty.'

The Aged woman took a step backwards suddenly unsteady on her feet, and toppled a little into the booth Clara had just vacated. Clara frowned, had she given her that much of a shock. Granted the no heartbeat thing was good for moments like these, but it usually worked better with superstitious populations and she had rather thought the Ageds were rooted in technology. Perhaps at heart they still held more primitive beliefs of…

Wait.

Clara looked round the room. No-one was approaching her despite her escape. She knew they were elderly and slow but she had expected some show of protest. Casually she leaned down to undo the ankle bindings and while doing so glanced around the booths and seats. Everyone was sitting very still. Very still indeed. It reminded her of a restaurant she once went to with the Doctor but she was pretty sure these weren't robots.

She straightened up and took a couple of careful steps to the counter where several empty glasses of lemonade sat amidst plates of half eaten donuts. An Aged sat on the chair the Doctor had once inhabited. His head dropped towards the counter and his face had become lost in tangled grey hair and beard. In one hand he held her headset. Clara leaned close and prodded him gently with one finger at the top of his arm. He snuffled, spluttered and then resumed his steady shallow breathing.

Clara stepped back, taking her headset from his fingers.

'Asleep, all asleep. You did something didn't you,' she said to the walls. There was a flicker in the neon of her diner's décor lights. Clara grinned. 'Was it in the food…? The drink? I wondered why you were merrily serving them burgers.'

There was a clanking and Clara spun round to see K-9 limping towards her with his belly panel still open and some wires trailing.

'Oh no!' Clara dropped to her knees by him and he weakly wagged his tail. 'I'm not sure I know how to fix you,' she flapped, 'Did they take bits out? Does it hurt? Do you do hurting?'

'K-9 must return to Master,' he squeaked, his usual tone a little distorted from his injuries. 'K-9 is in need of repairs. Only Master can repair K-9.'

'Right, yes, umm… well I need to see him too. Just come through the back with me and we'll track him down.'

Clara pushed the restroom door open and let her crippled dog-bot pass by. She quickly punched some co-ordinates into her console and dematerialised, rapidly leaving the Ageds and their moon behind. She was fairly sure they were a lost cause. Their attitude to those they had left on the planet to die, even now after two centuries made her feel slightly sick as did their apparent greed and sense of righteous self preservation. Also getting whacked over the head when you're trying to help a group of people never does much to endear them to you. In her experience these signs were bad signs and she might be better helping someone else.

'Maybe the planet's people are more reasonable,' she mused. Clara put on her headset again and tuned it to the Doctor's frequency. 'Come on where are you? You've got yourself into trouble again haven't you?' she sighed.

There was a fuzzy noise and some clicking as she waited for him to tune in.

Nothing.

The TARDIS hit the highest parts of the atmosphere and Clara began a scan of the planet to try and locate him. It seemed to be a very beautiful place, with settled weather and warm sun. A sort of reverse Earth with blue terrain and green sea and it was she noted largely water. There was little evidence of currently inhabited civilisation. She could bring up maps including large cities and also note the ruins of them on the scan, but they all appeared to have been empty for the last couple of centuries.

'The plague I guess, didn't leave many behind. So where are the ones who did survive? And where's the Doctor? Wait…'

She hit a few buttons.

'If you can track me with my sunglasses I wonder if I can do the same with yours? They're made of the same stuff.' She slotted them into the TARDIS console. 'Please work, I don't fancy the telepathic interface today, too much has happened and I don't trust my thoughts.'

The TARDIS appeared to consider this and after a moment began tracing what appeared to be the Doctor's signal. Sure enough it began bleeping urgently onto the screen closest to her. It was on the peninsula of a large central continent just south of the world's equator.

'Gotcha,' Clara said, rapidly programming the journey and setting the TARDIS engines in gear. K-9 trundled sadly over to her feet and let out a pitiful robotic whine.

'Don't worry,' she said absently patting his little tin head, 'Whatever he's got himself into we're here to get him out. But best you stay here,' she looked down, 'You're not a hundred percent.' The dog-bot nodded and shut down with a hum just as the TARDIS landed. Clara left him in the console room to recharge and made her way out of her diner, pleased to see that the ship had tidied itself up and removed all evidence of Ageds.

She swung open the diner door and her eyes widened.

The party was in full swing, and the Doctor was at the centre of it. So to speak.


	8. Chapter 8

8.

Clara stood in the open doorway of her diner and tried to make sense of the scene around her. She appeared to have landed in the middle of some sort of rainforest, populated with a few basic shacks and with a path leading down to the bright green sea. All the vegetation was in differing shades of blue. Navy shrubbery, aquamarine grasses, baby blue palm trees and flowers that glowed like sapphires. Instead of brown bark the trees were magenta and so was any exposed wood in the shacks. It all looked quite lovely except for the huge purple moon in the sky on its way to meet them.

Once her eyes were accustomed to the brilliance of the colour scheme Clara turned her attention to the inhabitants who she remembered were several generations removed from the Ageds but essentially of the same species. Except they really didn't look that way at all. Whereas the Aged had been small hunched leathery creatures draped in dark cloths and hidden amongst the ruins of their technology, these people could not have appeared more vibrant.

There was a clearing directly in front of her diner and a large group of people within it. There were dressed rather minimally and from what appeared to be natural products, their colours various shades of blue and purple just like the trees and plants around them. They appeared humanoid in most respects, tall and tanned, strong limbed but elegant but as Clara crept a little closer to the scene she could see that each of them had bright green eyes and each a white streak through their otherwise perfect black hair.

It was clear though that this was a friendly environment. Her diner received only cursory second glances and there was no hint that they found it odd or threatening that a random building had appeared in the trees. There was music, and a cluster of musicians to provide it at one side, merrily tapping on drums and blowing down trumpets. There was food, in enormous piles on rickety magenta tables and people appeared to be helping themselves in handfuls, more than a few of the natives sporting a tell-tale paunch which spoke of the planet's abundance. There were animals, well cared for and loved, being passed back and forth between children. Pets that were both dog like and cat like in their appearance although their colour schemes were like none Clara had encountered on earth. There were dances between couples and groups, and what looked like games taking place in other parts of the clearing, and in the centre, there was the Doctor.

On a podium.

Sitting on a throne.

Clara's laughter burst out of her so hard that several natives spun to look at her and the Doctor himself raised a weary hand from over his eyes and caught her gaze. There was the tiniest pause as the locals glanced back at him for some indication of how to behave and he gave them a reassuring wave of the hand. Clara's eyes widened and she tried hard not to laugh again as in a sudden rush a half dozen female natives swept forward and dragged her up to the podium the Doctor was on. There was a rummaging in one of the shacks nearby and a less impressive looking chair than the Doctor's was brought out for her. After some faffing and organising Clara settled herself on their little platform and stared at him as the dancing and celebrations started again around them.

'Shut up,' he said.

She tried to, she really did, but it was very hard, what with him wearing a crown of blue pansies.

'What's that on your head?' she managed to say without dissolving completely.

'What does it look like?' he snapped and glared at her.

'It brings out your eyes.'

'Shut up.'

'Is this why you've been so quiet? All that radio silence? I was worried and all that time you've been sitting here like the Ancient Wiseman of some long lost tribe.'

'They aren't fans of technology, they took my headset.'

'Oh,' Clara smirked, 'Looks like they took your clothes too.'

'Shut up.' He covered his eyes again with one hand, his elbow leaning on his magnificent throne's arm.

'I like the necklace too, is it a daisy chain?'

'A slightly bigger version. They aren't technically from the same family as actual Daisies…' he stopped speaking when he caught Clara's expression, nodding in sarcastic appreciation of his alient biology lesson.

Clara pressed her lips together, threw a glance down his exposed chest. 'Aren't you… you know… a bit chilly like that.'

He groaned. 'It wasn't my idea, they invited me to their celebration, I was trying to get them on side…'

'Looks like it worked,' Clara observed, 'They obviously thought you are the bee's knees,' she looked at considerably knobbly his knees and he shifted uncomfortably, 'Who would have thought getting half naked would get them on side. That's got to be a boost to your ego, right?'

'It's not about getting half naked, Clara,' he sounded exasperated with her already and it delighted her, 'it's about working on a level with them. They are a complex tribe with a mixture of very ingrained beliefs. They were betrayed years ago by the people on the moon, by people with spaceships and technology, by people like us.'

'I met them, they weren't the nicest bunch. Tried to steal the TARDIS and K-9 is looking a bit worse for wear.'

'K-9?' The Doctors blue eyes widened with concern, 'What did they do to him?'

'He'll be fine I left him on my TARDIS to plug himself in and recharge. Might need some minor tinkering with once we get back.'

'K-9! Poor little…'

'Never mind K-9, Doctor,' Clara said. 'You were saying… about working with these people?'

'Oh, yes…' the Doctor gathered himself and Clara watched as he surreptitiously tugged his blue grass skirt down to cover some more of his thighs. 'As I was saying. They were very badly betrayed at a time when society here was already very divided. To put it basically those with technology and those without. The plague came and those with the means escaped, leaving these people's ancestors to die.'

'Looks like some of them didn't though,' Clara looked round at the crowd.

'A very small few survived due to a genetic abnormality which rendered them immune to the plague. You see how they all have the same hair and eyes?'

'Pot luck, a gene like that,' Clara said.

'Evolution,' the Doctor corrected, 'And in their own way although they don't understand scientific theory they are absolute believers of evolution.'

'The Moon people, the Ageds, ' Clara said, 'They are all dying, all sterile, they can't evolve.'

The Doctor considered this for a moment, 'Some might say given what they did that that was fitting, nature's own way of weeding them out.'

'I was tempted not to help them at all, but they are still going to crash into this planet, and these people,' she gestured around the party.

'You think they deserve to be helped more than the Ageds? Careful Clara,' he warned.

'This is making my head hurt,' Clara said, 'I don't usually get into dilemmas, I like a nice straightforward adventure. A bank heist or a trip to see Robin Hood, nothing too ethical.'

The Doctor snorted, 'Sorry Clara, but you're signed up for this class now, Advanced Time Lord Ethics 101.'

'I don't remember putting my name down for that one,' she said.

'Compulsory. Comes with age. I'm not a fan of it myself, it doesn't get any easier.'

A young local woman approached with a bowl of multi-coloured fruit and Clara gratefully received it setting it between her and the Doctor. The almost luminous apples and bright orange peach shaped items tempted her to try them for the taste alone even if she didn't need to eat from hunger. She watched The Doctor thoughtfully lick blue juice from his fingers.

'So what are our options? ' Clara said, 'Who do we save and how do we save them?'

'Those are the wrong questions,' he replied, glancing at her before returning his gaze to the celebrations below them.

'Somehow I thought you might say that.'

'The question is do we save anyone at all?' he muttered.

Clara raised her eyebrows, 'OK I wasn't expecting that. I hate to point this out to you but there's a moon up there about to burn through the atmosphere and destroy everything on this planet and everything on its own surface too. Regardless of who might be the worthier collection of people we have to do something. Now I don't think the Aged would work with anyone else to fix this, they're selfish and unpleasant and out for what they can get. But these people,' Clara nodded towards the planet's population, 'We could work with them, right?'

'What are you suggesting Clara? That we blow up the moon to save the planet? That we kill your Ageds off to save these people?'

'Well to be blunt they are very Aged indeed, and unable to reproduce, it's a matter of time before they all die, they said so themselves. The people on this planet have a chance to go on, have families, continue to expand their species.'

Clara stopped, 'Why are you looking at me like that?' she asked.

A shadow passed over the Doctor's face and he dropped his gaze, 'I never thought I'd hear you talk like that, that's all,' he said quietly.

'Like what? Rationally? Realistically?

'Heartlessly,' he almost whispered. 'It wasn't so long ago you were saving a moon from being blown up because a single life would be lost. You defended that creature's right to live, nature's right to make the choices.'

'What?' Clara's anger surfaced quickly and she felt a tightness where her heart used to beat, 'How dare you! This is nothing like that. There is no good outcome here, somebody has to die, it's up to us to help minimise the damage, save who we can, and if we have to pick sides I won't be picking the Ageds, it's not logical apart from anything else.'

'Oh it's not logical…' the Doctor said, 'That's our excuse now is it? It's not logical.'

'Doctor why are you being like this?'

The Doctor drew himself up in his seat and looked across at her with a sad expression, the petals of his flower crown reflecting effervescent blue in eyes. She suddenly felt a little ashamed. Once upon a time she had advocated that the creature in earth's moon be allowed to live. Once upon a time when the Doctor made decisions for the 'best possible outcome,' she had been horrified. Now she was increasingly aware she sounded as he and once done. Out of necessity, out of experience.

She watched the sadness in his expression and in the new lines of his face. He might have done Advanced Time Lord Ethics 101 like her, but she was suddenly sure he'd done the next module too, and the one after that, and that if anything it only got more and more complex. She felt suddenly afraid and out of her depth.

'Clara you haven't actually addressed the most important question of all here,' he said softly.

'Which is?' she asked.

'Do the people here want to be saved?' he said.

'Of course they want to be saved!' she all but exploded, bringing several natives to a halt by the podium. They stood looking at her curiously and gradually the music died down as more of them gathered. 'The Ageds knocked me out and tried to get me to lend then my ship so they could get off that moon. Even at their great age they have the impulse to remain alive at all costs. They're two hundred plus years old and they still want to live…'

'Clara…'

'So these people, these young, vibrant people, these people who survived by fluke and chance when that plague hit, they are going to want to survive even more. What else is this all about? You're sitting there like the saviour on the throne, they are looking to you to get them out of this.'

'No…' the Doctor said softly, 'No, they're not. You didn't ask, you're not listening.'

Clara frowned, 'What? What are you talking about?'

'Clara, is that really what you think they are doing? Worshipping me as some sort of God?'

'That isn't so strange,' she said, 'You land here in a spaceship, you come to save the day from the moon crashing, they're a primitive society, that's probably the conclusion they will come to right? They've never seen anything like a TARDIS or a Time Lord before now.'

'Forgive us,' a voice spoke firmly but kindly from below the podium, 'But we have, we are well aware of spaceships and well meaning rescue missions.' Clara looked down into the face of a young man. If he had been human he might have been around twenty. He and the same bright green eyes as all of his people and the same dark hair with the white streak on one side.

'Hello,' he said, 'My name is Justra, 'I couldn't help but hear your debate, I'm rather partial to one myself. But I do think you need to know the facts before you go on.' He smiled openly.

Clara sat a little open mouthed, 'I…'

'I know how we might look to outsiders, ' Justra said, 'Palm trees and shacks, no trace of what you would consider to be civilisation. We appear uneducated and basic in our needs, but you see we are more educated than you could realise.'

Clara glanced at the Doctor who made a motion with his eyebrows which roughly translated as 'Listen.'

Justra climbed the podium and sat on the edge of it just below Clara's seat.

'Your friend the Doctor came here to offer help with the Moon,' he said, 'He told us that without aid it would crash into our planet within the next day or so. What he did not expect was that we already knew this. We had not calculated as accurately as he could with his science but we can see,' he looked up at the sky, 'We have eyes,' he smiled. 'And we are at peace,' he added.

'What do you mean you are at peace?' Clara asked.

'He means they don't want to be rescued,' the Doctor said. 'Like you I couldn't believe it at first. I tried various ways of explaining the situation, what I might be able to offer.'

'He even joined us in our celebrations,' Justra said nodding at the Doctors minimal outfit with a hint of a teasing smile, 'We were impressed with how much he seemed to care.'

'He always cares, 'Clara said. 'But I don't understand why, why you don't want to be saved.'

'If we are meant to be saved we will be saved,' Justra said simply. 'Two centuries ago we were sure we were doomed when the Others left us behind, we were bitter and angry. But we lived, just enough of us, to carry on. It is possible that something similar will happen here.'

'But all the readings show the planet will be destroyed….'

'Readings, science, probabilities,' Justra said kindly, 'It is what we believe in our hearts that matters most, and I believe we will make it through if we are meant to. The Others left, but in the end though it was difficult for many years, it was us who really survived. We still have our home, our children, our planet, we are grateful and we will never give up on her.'

'Doctor!' Clara turned to plead with him and he offered her a small shrug of his shoulders.

'You heard the man.'

'But you can't just leave it at that.'

'Ripples not Tidal waves, Clara, 'Remember the rules,' he added.

'That's a ridiculous rule given the circumstances,' she scoffed. 'There's going to be a massive actual Tidal wave when that thing hits and it will take out everything. Ageds, these people, everything!'

'Justra's people have chosen,' The Doctor said and she felt slightly patronised at his tone, 'Look around you, look at what they are doing, dancing, singing, eating the best produce their world has produced, reminiscing about he good times, expressing their love. They aren't afraid to celebrate.'

'There's nothing to celebrate.'

'Yes, yes there is,' he said and Clara felt him slip one hand over hers. 'They are celebrating life.'

'Their lives are ending if we don't do something.'

'Maybe,' he said squeezing her hand, 'Maybe not, some endings are beginnings in disguise,' and she caught something in his eye as he let go. Something in his eye and something in his mind as their hands parted. Clara watched him settle back in his throne and run his fingers thoughtfully over his beard.

She'd forgotten he did this sort of thing.

Rule number one of being the Doctor, never tell anyone your real plan.


	9. Chapter 9

9.

He could be annoyingly quiet sometimes. She'd forgotten that too. Her memories of the Doctor were always of him chattering away about space and time and aliens and strange discoveries. It unnerved when he became introspective and thoughtful, dropping only cryptic clues to his inner machinations. Endings and beginnings, he said, whose endings and beginnings? When? How? She tried to extract more but he clammed up, retreating into a mood almost as dark as the sky.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. The sun set, the skies turned deep purple with the light coming from the ever closer moon. Several times the Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver skywards and took some readings, a sight which Clara found amusing as being blue it now matched his borrowed celebratory outfit and daisy chains. She had tried to tease him lightly for his colour co-ordinated accessories but he glowered at her with such severity she actually stopped, a little taken aback.

Finally with the party and the flames of torches dying they said goodbye to their hosts and began to make their way back to the TARDIS, nearly invisible against the navy blue shrubbery. Once again Clara was itching to talk, debate, and make some solid plans. They had promised the people that they would not interfere but she had had the aching sensation that underneath his cool demeanour and pretty crown of flowers the Doctor was plotting the inevitable rescue. The plight of the Hydrassiuns had to bother him the way it bother her, and she just hoped that they had time enough left to act. The moon looked closer but they were no nearer to any actual feasible rescue mission.

The doors of the TARDIS closed behind them and the Doctor climbed the steps to the balcony to retrieve his original clothing. There was no teasing or banter and the ship herself remained stony silent. Clara pottered around the console while he dressed. And at last he reappeared by her side.

'Are you speaking to me yet?' she asked.

'I wasn't not speaking to you.'

'You've been in a mood all evening.'

'Yes well forgive me but there are important moral questions that need answering and a huge radioactive moon hovering just outside this planet's atmosphere.'

Clara looked at him as he typed something into the console. 'In the old days you'd see that as a challenge,' she said casually. His eyes snapped up to her.

'I'm a little more cautious now, I try not to play God, I try not to make waves.'

'I see that,' Clara said, 'And to some extent I get it, no destroying the universe, accept that some things must end.'

'Yes,' he said and she watched as he toyed with the frayed cuffs of his 'Doctor' jacket.

'Some things,' she said, 'Not all. You're still the Doctor, you said, some things still need the Doctor, some things force you to leave the TARDIS and fix things. Like this, like these people, you could stop this… maybe… somehow. You can fix it, right?'

'Oh Clara after all this time, you still have that blind faith in me?' he laughed sorrowfully. 'Yes I could fix it. I could. I can. But should I?'

'I would never lose faith in you, Doctor,' Clara answered. She smiled and he watched her until it seemed he couldn't look any longer.

'You might never lose faith, but I have…' he said quietly looking skyward briefly.

'Don't say that.'

He shrugged away a hundred years of memories and more of regrets, and quickly changed the subject.

'So, Clara, you've been doing this for a while, I tell you what, you get first dibs on this one. Seeing as you've been out and about in space for a bit yourself, tell me what you would do?' he looked up at her with a small something of genuine helplessness in his eyes, 'because it seems I have so many decisions to make when I'm the Doctor, I struggle to think them all through and I don't always get them right. Perhaps a fresh set of eyes is needed, mine are so um… tired…'

Clara frowned. He was asking for her input. But surely it was all obvious? He had a plan, clearly, he just needed to put it into action and save the planet. The number of times she had watched him rush headlong into things in despair and now here he was debating the best course of action with her. Well, Ok, maybe that was a positive thing, a more thorough planned approach was something she could understand. But it felt weird. She hesitated as he handed the reins to her and then decided to go with it. Under his new modesty there was an odd kind of exhaustion about him that concerned her.

'When we were at the celebrations you spoke about beginnings and endings and you looked… you had that look… the one where you have a plan,' she started.

'Oh I always have a plan,' he chuckle, 'It just isn't always the best one.'

'Maybe we need to hear it anyway,' she countered, 'Because honestly this is a bit out of my league, tech wise. You do all the physics stuff I do the touchy feely bits… So spill, tell me the details.'

He sighed, 'Well it would work I think, the mechanics of it,' for a second his eyes sparkled with excitement, 'But I'm not sure… I mean I… this is where I fall down, where perhaps I need you? 'he ran his hands through his hair. 'There's a way to fix this but it isn't exactly subtle and it's complicated. There are huge consequences for the planet, for its people, for the solar system it sits in.'

'Huge tidal wave then?'

'Biggest. But if we do nothing it will also be a huge tidal wave as the Moon hits. The planet will spin off its axis entirely. Anything that doesn't die from the impact will probably freeze to death in an ice age triggered by its new orbit. And there's the radioactivity. Currently the moon is on course to hit the areas most populated, sparse as they are.'

'The people will be completely wiped out. That's what you're saying?'

'Most likely,' he acknowledged.

'They have faith that some of them will survive, like after the plague.'

'There are no 100% guarantees Clara, maybe some would, but most likely not.'

'So option one, do nothing, everything dies.'

'Yes.'

'Then it's not an option,' Clara said strongly.

'It's what they want, the Hydrassiun people,' the Doctor said, 'No interference. They have placed faith in their planet and their own ability to survive. I told them I could help, they declined.'

'What about if you do the thing?' she asked.

The Doctor looked at her confused, 'The thing?'

'You know, the thing you think will work.'

He took a deep breath, half and half fighting with himself. He had the answer, the Clever Boy, but he also had the doubt that came with experience, of rights and wrongs and grey areas, of living with the blame. 'Ah yes well there's no guarantee it will,' he said trying to quell his excitement, ' and it would be without their consent or knowledge which is serious Clara, very serious…but in theory…'

'In theory?'

'In theory I can move the moon,' he said slowly and with some aplomb. There it was, the old pride. I can do a Clever Thing, shall I show you?

Clara snorted. 'Move the moon? How do you move a moon?' she asked sceptically. 'It's huge, it's racing to the planet, it's unstable and might disintegrate at any time. How do you move it? Tractor beam? Teleportation? Does the TARDIS have that kind of power? Wait no maybe we could use both our TARDISes is that what you were thinking? Move the moon out of the trajectory, Doctor that's brilliant. Save everything, no moral dilemma.'

'No… not that simple. They don't want saved and anyway…. not the TARDISes, they are powerful but not that powerful and it could all spin out of control quickly if we slipped up on any of the settings which we would because the moon is so unstable it would disintegrate mid teleportation. Disaster all round, radiation everywhere. No this is a different thing entirely. Something I'd been working on for… other purposes but it might work here too.'

'So what is it?'

'Telekinesis.'

'What?'

'I move the moon with my brain.' Clara giggled at the funny little smile on his face as he said the words. He was so proud, and well he might be, it sounded pretty cool. She couldn't let him smile so smugly though.

'That's ridiculous! It's a moon. You might be able to float a pencil or whatever but even your massive Time Lord brain wouldn't cope with that.'

He smiled harder and Clara was losing the battle with his Smug, 'My massive brain has been to School recently remember. Mainly for the telepathy instruction but the Telekinesis had so much possibility attached to it. I couldn't resist but to study it more. Now in this situation my telekinesis would need amplified somewhat but in theory it's possible. Just strap me into the appropriate device and I'll shove the thing out of the trajectory with my mind.'

'Just like that?'

'Well, it would probably disintegrate in the process but a few hefty meteorites is better than a moon landing on your planet and if I do it right maybe I can direct them somewhere safer… or even bind the moon into one piece… I'm not sure… I've not had much practice,' he hesitated, running through the possibilities and equations in his head. His face fell a bit at his calculations.

'If I couldn't hold the moon together with a psychic bind it would kill all the remaining Ageds,' he said less enthusiastically and with a noticeable slump in mood.

'No great loss,' Clara said quickly.

'They are living beings. They won't have a clue what we're about to do. We don't know what it's has been like for them up there. Cut off.'

'They left the people behind to die!'

'Then they realised their mistake. It's all in the histories I've managed to track down. Some of the Ageds, early on, tried to make contact and amends. The planet's people were furious and cut the lines of communication. We'll never know the whole story and it's none of our business really. No one is entirely free of blame here, no-one ever is.'

'Grey areas… and we can't save everyone,' Clara said.

'Exactly,' the Doctor agreed. 'This is a long standing feud fuelled by ancient hurt and anger and injustice. Neither tribe wants to help the other, they have different values and principles, some of which you might find offensive, or strange, but it's not our place to judge.'

'Doctor,' she growled in irritation.

'What would you do?' he asked again.

'Easy. I'd move the moon, save the planet as best we can.'

'And do it against the Hydrassiuns will?'

'If it works they will just think that their belief in Fate was correct. They don't need to know! We're just trying to help. And do you know what maybe it is Fate that we are here…'

'Clara…' he said warningly.

'No you're not going to tell me it's immoral to save them.'

'But it's Ok to live with the deaths of the Ageds?' he asked seriously.

'Yes, if that's what it takes.' Clara tried to dismiss the issue, 'It might not come to that anyway you said, you can do a psychic wotsit, a bind?' she gave him a look she knew melted both his hearts, she was not going to be defeated on this, that planet needed saving.

'Maybe it's very advanced, it would put a lot of strain on my mind.'

Clara frowned, 'How much strain? Dangerous levels of strain?'

A beat. 'No, no, nothing I can't handle,' he said.

'You sure?'

'Yes, yes, its fine, and you… you argue well for it…'

'So we're decided we try and move the moon out the way, bonus points if everybody lives.'

The Doctor watched her for a moment and in that second she couldn't read his expression. Sadness or pride? Concern? Fear? Nostalgia perhaps, or even grief. His emotions were as confused as the grey areas they walked in their current dilemma. She felt something at the back of her mind, tweaking her for attention, trying to warn her of some vague anxiety. She tried to push it aside but finally it unnerved her.

'What? That is what you were going to do in the end right? You weren't just going to step back and leave. That isn't you. Save someone, you said, I'm the Doctor and I save people, that's your purpose. And no you can't save everyone, but you can't be utterly neutral, you have to feel, you have to fight for something.'

'Yes…' he said doubtfully.

'Doctor this is real, this isn't your safe place with the pretend cherry trees. You can't always hide. Those are real people with real children and a real future and they will die if you do nothing. You have to try. The Ageds, well you can do your best if you need to, but also know that they had their time, their chance, they made the wrong decision back then.'

'And paid for it every day since,' the Doctor said.

'Sometimes that's what happens,' Clara said coolly, 'Sometimes it's too late and things can't be made right.'

He looked at her again, a cloud passing over his eyes as he thought and judged and weighed the options.

'You have to be the Doctor,' she said, 'And sometimes it means hard decisions, bad choices, but you still have to choose. Right? I remember you saying that, whenever something is difficult, it helps me work things out.'

The words hit home somewhere and he flinched.

'Clara,' he said softly, 'To me you are always, always right….but…'

Clara wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face against the worn velvet of his jacket. 'But what?' She listened to his double heartbeat and squeezed him closer to her, pressing a kiss over his sternum.

She felt him take in a deep breath and let it go. 'Nothing, but nothing, you're always right,' he said quickly, a decision made, 'Come on I'll show you what we're going to need to do.'

'That's more like it,' she chirruped, leaning back in his arms, 'That's my Doctor. Where to?' Clara gripped his hand.

'Downstairs…'

She beamed at him and led him underneath the console to where his workshop and its chaos still remained after all these decades largely unchanged. Boxes of parts, stray cables, lights that flashed for no reason, an array of futuristic tools and materials. The smell of the TARDIS's engine was stronger here and Clara breathed it in happily while the Doctor sat at his work bench.

Old times, still the best years of her now considerably longer life.

'Here,' he said directing her attention, 'I've been working on it for a while.' He lifted what appeared to be a rather medical looking silver device in the shape of a skull cap. There were crystals set along the edge of it and wires trailing from the sides. When Clara followed them she could see that they linked up to a set of amplifiers and speakers the Doctor had converted. His guitar lay sadly to one side, ampless.

'Ok…' Clara said.

'Amplifier,' he said. 'For my telekinetic skills, they needed a little development, watch.'

He slipped the metal cap over his head and made a few adjustments, then he closed his eyes. Clara looked back at the workbench and waited for something to move. A pencil maybe. Or a screwdriver. Some old batteries. Nothing.

'It's not doing anything,' she complained.

'Yes it is.'

And suddenly the music started playing. Clara's eyes widened and she whipped around to see the guitar floating in the air behind her, the individual notes of what she had long considered to be 'The Song Called Clara,' picked out softly by the invisible hand of the Doctor's mind.

'Oh my God,' she whispered, trying hard to fight the burning in her eyes, 'How are you even….?' She looked back at him to find him smiling, the music never faltering.

'Telekinesis is an amazing thing once you get the hang of it,' he said. 'Technically I don't need the cap to do that, but it allows me to do other things while it's playing, I don't have to concentrate on it at all. It's like… breathing.'

'That's incredible,' Clara looked back at the guitar, still playing in perfect time. 'So this amplifier thing… you think you can make it move the moon?'

'I'm going to give it a go.'

'You're going to need a lot of amps,' Clara observed, and he laughed.

'I'll see what our TARDISes can rustle up overnight. Go and fetch yours and park her back on the holodeck. We'll set things up there, lots of space,' he said turning back to the workbench, cap removed and screwdriver in hand. 'In the meantime I'll tweak the settings. It's all a bit too fine motor skills and stuff at the moment. We need power and lots of it.'

'Doctor?'

'Yes?'

'When you said you were working on this for another purpose, what was it?'

He looked up at her a little embarrassed. 'It's just a silly idea I had a while ago.'

'How long ago? Usually nothing holds your attention for longer than an hour.'

'Oh since before I went to the School. At the time I wanted to hone my telepathy. Then I went there, learned more about it, saw new possibilities. I never thought I'd get the chance to try it, really, it was more something I wanted to achieve so that if the opportunity did arise I could…'

'You could what, you're all over the pace what are you trying to say?'

'I wanted to… make amends,' he said, 'If I ever got the chance. I took something from someone I cared about very much, and I wanted to give it back.'

'Doctor….'

'Go and fetch your Diner, Clara,' he said brusquely, 'That moon isn't getting any further away.' He made a shooing gesture and she started back up the stairs to the console room. As she reached the TARDIS doors she realised her song was still playing.


	10. Chapter 10

10.

Clara landed the diner to the sound of David Bowie's greatest hits drifting across the holodeck and she couldn't help but smile when she saw the Doctor in the centre of a huge circle of amplifiers with his telekinetic cap in one hand and a sonic screwdriver in the other. He was carefully adjusting settings while his guitar floated behind him belting out Suffragette City and she was sure she could catch snatches of his voice humming along. With a grin Clara grabbed the trolley her own TARDIS had supplied her with, and trundled across to meet him with her own stock of Fenders.

'You're having way too much fun there,' Clara joked as she approached and he actually jumped, turning to see her. Any merriment that had been in his features immediately left him.

'Sorry… umm…' he glanced at the guitar and its volume lowered. 'You're right, I should be concentrating.'

Clara gave him a puzzled look. 'No, it's actually OK,' she said, 'I was kidding, go ahead. You used to do this stuff all the time, it helped you think.' She began to unload her amplifiers and place them in the circle, pausing to throw a glance at him in the centre. He was hovering uncertainly, brow knitted.

The Doctor looked hesitantly at the equipment in his hands and for a moment appeared confused as to his next move. Should he turn off the music? Clara's frown grew deeper and she stepped towards him to lay a hand on his arm.

'Just carry on,' she said gently, 'You're perfectly capable of setting this up with a bit of background music going on. You were enjoying it, I could see that when I touched down.'

'Clara, this is a serious business, I should be wasting resources on music.'

'You're not actually moving the moon right now. Relax will you?'

He chewed his lower lip, 'Fine, fine, I'll carry on, you just…' he pointed roughly with the screwdriver, 'Arrange those. It has to be a perfect circle and then these wires have to be fed through um… ' he looked around vaguely, 'Going to need a chair, too many wires…'

Clara shoved her first Fender into place and watched as he and the TARDIS set up the rest of the equipment. By the end there was a circle of some twenty four Fender Amplifiers, each tinkered with to amplify the Doctor's brainwaves rather than his guitar. In the middle the TARDIS had produced a jump seat. Clara could see twenty four sets of wires trailing from its arms and a single thicker cord running up the back. That way all the amps could be run up to the Doctor's head so that when he put on the cap he could be connected to them all at once.

'It all looks a bit Frankenstein's monster to me,' Clara observed as the Doctor fussed around the chair.

'That's not terribly reassuring, Clara,' he muttered.

'Sorry,' she peered round the back of the chair, 'Just wanted to make sure your head didn't explode or something.'

He shot her an irritated glance. 'This does have its risks you know…'

'Well don't do anything silly. I know you,' she told him, standing by the chair with her arms folded, 'You do silly things because you think 'in for a penny.' Don't be a martyr. Don't try to show off. Whatever happens you are more important than everyone on that planet. More important than everyone,' she emphasised.

A look of discomfort passed over his face at her statement. 'Clara…'

'No!' she held her finger up, 'Shut up. You will not do anything stupid.'

'Fine,' he said unconvincingly. 'No heroics. But that goes for you too. Now shall we get started?'

Clara felt a sudden jolt of worry in her gut. As much as she had been pushing to help the Hydrassiuns it now became obvious that the means they had to do that very much involved putting the Doctor right in the line of fire. She didn't know much about telekinesis and although she trusted him her lack of understanding just added to her worry. All those wires, all that potential energy. It could all go wrong. What if it went wrong? What if he was hurt? Clara felt the tight knot in her chest again the more she let her thoughts cascade. She had forgotten all of this in the years they had been apart. She'd forgotten how hard he would try when she asked him to do something. She'd forgotten how absolutely panic stricken she could feel at the thought he might be in danger.

If you love me in any way, you'll come back.

'Oh God…' she whispered.

Around her the holodeck shifted. The bright white empty hangar darkened and moved until she and the Doctor were surrounded by space. A perfect projection of the purple moon heading for Hydrassus was ahead of them and beyond that thousands of stars and galaxies peacefully circled in their own orbits. She felt the Doctor move beside her and snapped her attention back to him as he prepared to sit in the jump seat.

'Wait,' she said and he glanced at her curiously. Clara took a step forward and moved to hold him. She had a sudden painful memory of embracing him in Trap Street and he seemed to mirror that now in the line of his neck as he bent his head to her shoulder. She tried to blink away uncalled for tears and berated herself for being so pathetic. A century had passed since that day and this was nothing like how it had been then. Everything was different. They were different. This was completely in their control, they had chosen to help and were fully briefed. He'd been cautious. He'd been to Hogwarts for God's sake. Just stop worrying.

'Clara are you alright?' he asked from the crook of her neck.

'Yes.' She was fine. Fine.

'We don't need to do this at all you know,' he said. Clara frowned and pushed back from him a little.

'Yes we do look!' she pointed at the holographic images in front of her. 'Anyway don't you want to impress me with your moon moving skills?' she teased immediately regretting the implication.

He looked at her with concern and she tried her best to mask her emotions.

'Clara...'

'Shut up… sit,' she propelled him into his chair. Behind it the guitar switched to Space Oddity. He raised his eyebrows at her playfully and Clara batted him on the arm. 'Ha ha very funny Major Tom.'

'Just a little mood music,' he said clearly trying to reassure her. Clara rolled her eyes.

'What do I need to do?' she asked.

'I need you to step out the circle,' he replied, 'I'll get hooked up and then we'll see what I can do.'

Clara nodded, the anxiety still in her stomach but somewhat reassured by his words. She stepped back out of the circle and towards her Diner, placing the Doctor behind her. It was an odd scene created by the holodeck. A long winding path of cloud appeared between the Diner and the Doctor's circle linking them together by means of a walkway. He was some distance away and looked for all the world like he was suspended on a cloud platform in heaven, his guitar still strumming away softly in the background as he focused on placing the cap on his head. She watched him fiddle with wires a moment longer and then made for the seating which had appeared outside her TARDIS.

Her Diner, side on to the scene, appeared as it always did with its 1950s design and bright lights. A cluster of chairs had been created outside its door. A few tables accompanied them along with tiny candles and for some reason a menu. Clara glanced at it casually while she waited. Frozen physiology or not she could really do with a stiff drink and she chided herself once again for creating a family friendly diner and not a pub on that first trip out with her TARDIS. A milkshake appeared by one of her hands and she played with the straw trying to find something comforting in the Diner's familiarity but its view now was radically different, looking out as it did now across Hydrassus.

It was clear that in the time it had taken to arrange the Fenders and finalise the plans the moon had picked up considerable speed. It was just skirting the atmosphere on Hydrassus and as such glowing with heated gasses. It would not be long before it would ignite. Clara glanced back at the Doctor who was now fully adjusted in his seat, telekinetic cap in place. It was so unbearably quiet, the true silence of space perfectly replicated, that the tiny sound of the unamplified guitar could still be heard.

The Doctor appeared to be paying it no attention at all, rather as he had explained to her when he was wearing the cap the music came like breathing, undirected and without thought. She wondered if he had forgotten about it completely. Didn't he need to turn it off to focus? Clara thought back to when they had travelled together and the long nights he had spent alone while she slept. The number of times she had found him idly picking out a tune, his thoughts a million miles away.

Like breathing, it had always been like breathing to him. Perhaps it settled him, trained his thoughts. The song switched again and she turned back to the planet as 'Drive in Saturday,' played behind her.

A shift in the atmosphere. It was coming.

She had no idea what to expect but in a few moments it became clear something was happening. To begin with the guitar became quickly drowned out by a rising roar from the amplifiers. It started so slowly but before she knew it Clara was holding her hands painfully over her ears. The whole holodeck seemed to be shaking with the deep base noise and as it rose and rose it became punctuated with high crackling sounds. She glanced back at the Doctor right in the middle of twenty four shuddering fenders but found him to be focused and motionless, unaffected and in control of their surroundings. It was a powerful sight to see him seated there, hands resting on the arms of the chair, eyes closed while the thunderous noise increased around them. Clara felt something akin to awe watching him, all of that noise, all of that power coming from his mind, his mind alone. He could have been a Nordic god the way he sat there, bearded, wise and beautiful.

She smiled and turned back to the planet just as the noise seemed to gather under one note. She felt the odd sensation of it pushing past her as a single unit and then the most remarkable things began to happen on the projection the holodeck had supplied.

The gaseous purple moon where the Ageds lived seemed to judder and there was a tremendous rocky groan as it threatened to move closer to the planet. From what she could make out of its surface huge cracks had appeared already and it was deeply unstable. In a moment the force which had emanated from the Doctor pushed past her Diner and down the length of the holodeck. She imagined it bursting from the TARDIS as she watched its path on the holographic 'screen' before her. The Doctor's power wrapped around the centre of the moon and spread out towards its poles, covering it entirely in a binding, shimmering forceful net. There was a pause and the TARDIS shuddered around her. Not a holographic perception but the sound of the ship fighting to stay in its orbit and resist the gravitational pull to the moon.

Clara glanced back again and saw the Doctor tighten his grip on his chair and drop his head slightly. His teeth were gritted but he had more to give, she could see it in him. She tried to reassure herself that he looked ok, he was still in control, he could stop if he needed to and then her thoughts were interrupted by another thundering noise.

Clara spun back just in time to see the moon begin to draw back from its path to the planet. Her jaw dropped at the sight of the bound purple sphere steadily, slowly pull away from its dangerous path.

'Oh my god! Oh my God, Doctor you're doing it!' she glanced back at his still figure and then back to the unveiling action. The moon continued to move gracefully in its bindings held together by the power of the Doctor's mind alone. He was going to do it, the clever bastard he was going to save both worlds, and both peoples just as he had wanted to. Clara was bursting with pride. She stood suddenly by her table, engrossed and enraptured by the scene before her. 'You did it you did it! You're amazing! You…'

It took a second to realise what had happened and then the screaming tearing sounds of the bindings snapped and the image of the moon spun rapidly, angrily out of its new orbit and began to hurtle towards the planet. Without meaning to Clara cried out from shock and covered her mouth with both hands as the moon tore towards one of the landmasses beneath them, to the peninsula where Justra and his people lived.

'No! No, no, no!' Clara squealed. 'Doctor! Do something!'

He seemed to wrestle with the moon and she watched it struggle back and forth within its trajectory to the planet. It began to shake angrily and the deep cracks in its surfaced widened. Clara could see what was coming, even as the psychic bindings began to unfurl and the Doctor fought to keep them in place. A force like two opposing magnets pushed and pulled, tried to drive the moon out of the path leading straight to the populated areas. The noise was incredible and then the fires started. The moon hit the atmosphere and the gases erupted, shattering its body, splintering it into meteorites.

It was hideous, the screeching sounds of a world falling apart, the sight of the burning meteorites racing towards the earth below. Clara couldn't help but imagine the awful image of the Ageds and their demise as the rain of meteors fought with the Doctor's telekinesis over a huge sea. He was pushing, she could tell, to land them in ocean rather than burn on land, but she wasn't sure he'd make it.

Clara could barely stand to watch so she turned back to check the Doctor was still in some control. What she saw had her immediately alarmed. He sat upright still in the chair but there was smoke rising from where his hands gripped it. His body was shaking slightly, his eyes tightly shut and brow heavily furrowed in concentration. He was panting, trying to get his breath, clearly in pain and an omninous glow had begun in the centre of his chest.

'No!' she cried. 'No, not that!'

Clara looked back to the plant where the meteors were falling. He had managed to move the majority of them, the others poised to fall on unpopulated land. Suddenly Clara couldn't care less about the Hydrassiuns, they'd done their best, and everything there looked lost, what mattered was the man in the chair.

'Shut it off,' she commanded the TARDIS, 'Shut it all off, the chair, the amps, everything. Stop the hologram! Stop him!'

Gone. It was all gone immediately and Clara suspected the TARDIS had been waiting for such an order, the Doctor too stubborn to give it himself, to give up on his mission. The images of Hydrassus and its moon vanished and were replaced with the brilliant white of the holodeck. Now there was only Clara's Diner and the circle, only her and the Doctor. For a moment she hesitated and time stopped as she looked at him.

She watched him slump slightly in the chair, a gasp leaving his lips and with it a puff of golden light. Behind him his guitar played a handful of notes and then stopped abruptly, absolute silence descending on the room.

We can be heroes, just for one day.

She watched him collapse to the floor.

'Doctor!' Her voice sounded bare, agonised and it echoed wildly. Clara was running across the cold white tiles towards him, sliding to a halt at his side. He had landed face down so she turned him towards her, cradled his head. She made a motion to smooth back his hair, touch his cheek but her fingers came away sticky. He was bleeding, the tell tale trickle of his alien blood coming from his ear. Something had gone horribly wrong. She panicked.

'Oh no, no, no you daft old man, what have you done, I told you not to be stupid, I told you…. Doctor…'

Clara held him against her, shifted so she could use her lap to cradle his head better as she kneeled. 'Come on you need to wake up, Doctor, Doctor you pushed too hard, I pushed you too hard, I know it, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…I never wanted this… please you need to wake up now please…'

He made a soft moan and she pleaded with him further, glancing desperately round the empty deck for something that might help. The TARDIS picked up on her alarm and suddenly the area around them altered to that of an equally white clinic. She grabbed a starched white pillow and placed it under his head, tried to ignore the growing blood stain on its cotton weave. The Doctor groaned again at the movement, his eyelids fluttering, his skin palely fragile in the bright light.

'Come on,' she repeated trying to smile through her tears, 'Don't just lie there moaning at me, wake up, tell me I'm overreacting, just open your eyes… please… please… I can't lose you…. '

In her mind all she could see was that day in Gallifrey, in her stolen white TARDIS on the last day of the universe.

It was happening all over again.


	11. Chapter 11

11.

They were incredibly blue, that was the first thing she noticed. The Doctor opened his eyes and squinted against the white light but at the same time it sparkled in his irises in such a way that they appeared almost silver. They were alien bright but she had never seen them look more beautiful. She let out a sigh of relief and leant down to kiss his forehead.

'Clara…' he said, smiling softly and focusing on her. He reached up to touch her face. 'My Clara.'

'Shh, shut up you idiot,' she laughed. Clara squeezed him in an awkward hunched over embrace and he struggled unconvincingly in her arms.

'Clara!' he protested weakly, wrapping one arm over hers to squeeze back.

Clara beamed and alternated words with more small kisses. 'Oh thank God, you scared me there, you really scared me. Promise me something?'

'I'd promise you anything Clara, anything you could ever want,' he said, stopping his wriggling and gazing up at her as though she was the only star in the sky.

'Soppy git,' she said, 'You should have your brain explode more often...'

A look of utter confusion crossed his face and took root there.

'What?'

'That's what I want you to promise by the way,' she shifted to let the Doctor lean at a more comfortable angle against her lap. She had been kneeling on the fake-clinic floor for at least an hour fretting, and asking the TARDIS to check the Doctor's life signs. 'Promise you won't try that again, no more moving moons, no more crazy telekinesis…' she waggled her hands in the air.

'Clara?' he looked lost.

'Just ignore me next time,' she went on, 'You were right to be cautious and I pushed you, don't deny it. You did it for me, you always do it for me, the extra mile and I'm so sorry. You'd think we'd have learned. We didn't need to interfere, and I mean Justra didn't even want us to…'

'Wait… who…?' his brow wrinkled in pain.

'Justra, you know…' she stopped, frowning down at him, 'Doctor are you ok?' He blinked at her owlishly.

'Head hurts a bit,' he confessed, struggling but finally managing to sit up. He kneeled next to her on the tiles, took some of his weight on one arm. He touched the blood which was drying now in his beard and across his cheek; looked at it oddly, turned his hand over smearing it between fingertips. 'Bit woozy. Sorry what were you saying?'

Clara snapped her fingers for attention in front of his nose. 'Doctor, important question, who am I?'

'You're Clara, Clara, don't be ridiculous,' he said eyeing the back of his left hand curiously. He prodded the ring he wore. 'Ring?' he asked himself. 'Huh.'

'And where are we?' she asked.

Apparently focusing back on her voice again he looked around the relatively blank room, noted the medical equipment the TARDIS had just produced for them. 'Um… some sort of hospital somewhere. You're from earth so… a hospital on earth… maybe?'

'Um… not quite,' Clara looked at him more carefully. 'Doctor what have you just been doing, why does your head hurt, why did I mention the moon?'

He winced at rubbed at the space between his eyes. 'So many questions, Clara, slow down,' he swept his hand over his hair and massaged the back of his neck. 'Now what were you saying again?

'Doctor what have we just been doing?' she tried to keep a high pitched note of alarm out of her voice.

'Well that's…' he stopped in his tracks. 'I mean we were probably… some sort of…'

Clara widened her eyes at him.

'Adventure?' he ended uncertainly, peering at her through half squinted eyes. 'My head really does hurt,' he added absently, 'Is this a hospital then? Why are we on the floor?'

'You've forgotten,' Clara said.

'Forgotten what?'

'What you've just been doing.'

'Could just be concussion?' he tried. 'Did something hit me on the head? Was it that guitar?' he looked across at the abandoned instrument, all that remained of the telekinesis experiment when the TARDIS shifted the environment, due to it being the personal property of the Doctor.

'No, nothing hit you on the head,' Clara muttered. She leant forward and fiddled in his jacket pocket for a second until she found his sonic screwdriver. 'You wired your skull into two dozen Fenders and tried to move a moon with your brainwaves.'

The Doctor laughed suddenly, and then winced and held his temples, 'That is utterly ridiculous, Clara, nice try… now what really happened?'

She glared at him and pointed the screwdriver at his head. He had the good grace to look a little alarmed.

'Need to run a scan,' she explained.

'Oh… right…Go ahead, I'm pretty sure I taught you how. Yes I remember, after we visited the sea made entirely of silk. That was lovely wasn't it, Clara?' he sounded strangely dreamy.

'Shh. Scanning.' Clara knit her brows and focused on running the investigation while the whole time the Doctor watched her with a strange mixture of curiosity and adoration. She quickly directed the blue light over his brain and then looked seriously at the results.

'What is it?' he asked impatiently. 'I'm sure it's just a concussion… from something. Did I fall over?'

'You've forgotten.'

'Yes.'

'Everything.'

'No.'

'Yes you have, your brain… look at this… all these missing pathways where memories should be…' Clara handed the screwdriver to him and he peered at it, rubbing again at his painful neck.

'I can't have forgotten everything,' he said dubiously and shook the device vigorously like a thermometer before he looked again. 'I'm sure I know the important stuff. Like talking, I'm still talking! I don't usually delete the things that really matter. Or do I?' he drifted off looking puzzled. 'No, no it's fine, I remember, I remember!'

'What do you remember?'

'Well you of course,' he said looking up at her from where he was kneeling next to her on the floor. For a moment Clara just watched him and the softness in his eyes. She'd never seen an expression like it, open innocent unconditional love. It almost overwhelmed her on the spot. She was his absolute focus, bar none. He smiled a little and passed back the sonic, placing it in her palm and covering it with his hand but never taking his gaze from her face.

'You remember me?' she echoed, gradually piecing together the evidence.

'I could never forget you, Clara.'

'But you don't remember anything else?'

'I…' and he stopped, frowned, tried to grasp the memories from the air around him. 'I remember you…' he began again helplessly.

'And…' Clara pushed, 'What's the last thing you remember before you woke up just now?'

'Oh well…' he blushed, flustered, 'That is to say, we um… we'd been apart a very long time, I'm a bit hazy on the details there, but we'd been reunited and we... um…,' he blushed harder and looked away. 'I remember being under the cherry tree with you,' he said quietly. 'And it was wonderful but… you didn't… I wasn't…' he looked down. 'Anyway, cherry tree. Yes… not sure how we got here… is this a holodeck?' he frowned.

Clara bit her lip. 'Yes, this is a holodeck, on your TARDIS, and the cherry tree was a hologram too.'

'It was?'

'Yes.'

'But we… we did… didn't we?' he asked alarmed. 'I didn't imagine that?'

'Yes, we did, don't worry about that now.'

'But I do worry about it, I love you Clara, I want to make you happy, you're everything to me. It meant everything to me.'

Clara stared at his sudden unabashed declaration of love.

'Doctor…?'

'You look surprised, why are you surprised? Don't I tell you I love you? I think it all the time…' he frowned again, 'Maybe I haven't been saying it out loud. That can happen… My words don't reach my mouth. It's a thing, they get distracted. And embarrassed. Sometimes…' he wandered off again.

'Doctor there's something wrong. You've forgotten everything. And I mean everything. Except apparently me and… things we do together.'

'No I remember a lot more than that Clara,' he said with conviction.

'Go on,' she urged.

'I remember being in my own confession dial for millions of years, all of it, over and over, died, came back, relived it all. I remember that alright.'

'You do?'

'Yes, vividly,' he paused and looked down at his hands, held tight onto hers. 'You were all I could think of, you kept me alive. I spoke to you, I thought of you all the time. You were my safe place, my storm room.'

Clara's heart sank. 'What else do you remember?'

'I was in a place called Trenzalore for a long time,' he frowned trying to pick out the memory further. 'You came to visit, got frozen to the TARDIS,' he chuckled. 'Silly girl, silly impossible girl, you saved my life. You always save it, always you, or a version of you I'll be doing something dadt…'

'Such as?'

'Um… I… well I don't remember the details, but you always tell me it was something silly, and then you come to the rescue. You, or an echo of you. You're in my timestream... And you were there… you were there when I changed.'

'Yes I was,' Clara said quietly.

'My first face…'

'Yes.'

The Doctor lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it gently. 'The one thing I can never forget.'

Clara hesitated, watched again how bluely his eyes shone and how deep his pupils were as he looked at her innocently. She was everything, all he remembered, from start to present in his long, long life.

'OK,' she breathed feeling increasingly anxious, 'Maybe it has something to do with, I don't know, relationships? Love? Doctor, after we separated, you spent time with someone, twenty four years…'

'That's preposterous I never stay in one place so long!' he protested.

'Who was it?' Clara persisted, 'Who did you stay with all that time? Who could be that important?'

He took a breath and cocked his head appearing to think. He ran his nails through the hair on his cheek. 'I… I don't know Clara… it doesn't sound like something I do. You're probably the only person I know that I can stand to be around long… I don't think it was you, I'd know if it was you.'

'Doctor you had a wife, called River…' Clara drip fed the information waiting for a flash of recognition.

'Did I?' he asked blankly.

'You had four wives actually.'

'That's rather greedy isn't it?' he scoffed. 'That doesn't sound like me? I'm very faithful…'

'Two of them were rather famous,' she pushed, 'Marilyn Monroe?'

'Who?'

Clara rubbed her face in desperation. 'Doctor is clear somethings gone very wrong. You were using telekinesis and now you can't remember anything except me.'

'And my head hurts, did I mention that?'

'Yes,' Clara said. 'None of this is good news. Doctor we're going to need some help.'

'Help? Right,' he looked round the room as though seeking it.

'Do you know any, I don't know… psychic space hospitals?' Clara asked.

'Um… no… I um… space hospitals…?' he looked down at his hand again distracted. 'Clara are we married?'

'What?!' she squeaked.

He looked up at her again, eyes wide. 'I've got a ring on, I just wondered if… I wouldn't forget that would I? Imagine if I'd forgotten our wedding day I'd never forgive myself.' He looked bemused.

Clara sighed and squeezed his hand. 'No you haven't forgotten, and no we're not married.'

He glanced at her naked left hand. 'Why not?' he looked at her quizzically. 'We must be? Didn't I ever ask? I distinctly remember...' he paused and then his face fell. 'Oh, no, I didn't… I wanted to and then I didn't.'

Clara looked at him in curious sympathy. 'Did you?'

'Yes, very much, I was so sure I had, it's a bit blurry...' he blinked. 'We were in the Cloisters.' The Doctor laughed shortly. 'Pathetic really. I'd had four and a half billion years to pluck up the courage, must have rehearsed it so many times I've mistaken it for actually happening. I guess I bottled out when I finally saw you again.'

'In the Cloisters?' Clara said. She thought back to the pair of them, kneeling on the hard floor in the darkness of the Cloisters and the words he's spoken to her for the first time. The feel of his lips and the way they had sat together silently for a moment afterwards, foreheads touching, breath mingling. Just them and the dark, and a frozen moment in time. She imagined him trying to pluck up the courage as he described and then having to leave her again, his question unasked.

'You've still got time,' Clara smiled gently and forced herself back to the present, 'But we need to get this sorted first, I'll ask the TARDIS. She'll be able to find… Doctor! Doctor!'

He'd be fine she was sure, they'd just been talking, the bleeding had stopped and now everything seemed to be going wrong again. Dramatically, hurriedly wrong. The Doctor let out a piercing yell and toppled forward onto the pale tiles, clutching at his head, his fingers digging hard into his temples. He sobbed as he pleaded with the air.

'Clara! Gods! Oh God make it stop!' he curled into a foetal position on the cold floor and held his head tightly, the rest of him squirming from the pain. Clara leaned over him, tried to place her hands on his face to prise his fingers away so she could see, but they came away again heavily bloodied. This time there was more than just a trickle. It spilled from under his hands and across the bright white tiles with horrific vivacity as he continued to cry against the pain. Clara looked up sharply.

'Do something!' she bellowed at the ship, 'Do something you idiot!'

The room around her flickered once and then transformed into one of the many identical console rooms hidden all over the TARDIS. The Doctor was now curled into his armchair weeping in agony, with Clara standing by his side. She leaned quickly to kiss the top of his head and then raced down the steps, grabbed the monitor and swung it towards her.

'Think, think. Somethings happened, somethings gone wrong,' she chuntered under her breath and she scanned through co-ordinates. 'He used telepathy, he pushed too hard. I don't know anything about telepathy.' She typed frantically into the console. 'Who does? Gallifrey? Not going there…. Wait. He didn't go to Gallifrey to learn all that new stuff. He went to Hogwarts… Telepathy School. They taught him this. They must know what can go wrong and how to fix it. Telepathy School. Where the hell is that?'

She typed into the TARDIS some more and asked for locations of telepathic training. A list of several hundred suddenly ran down the screen. From the balcony she could hear his moans increasing and the intermittent sound of sobbing.

She banged the monitor. 'Well that's no help! There's dozens of them! Where did the Doctor go?' she glanced at the telepathic interface. She wasn't its biggest fan as more often than not she ended up places she shouldn't because of her complete inability to keep her mind from wandering. She was increasingly wary of crisscrossing timelines, especially the Doctors. It was complex enough between them.

'Please don't make me use that thing,' she pleaded thowing her head back to look up at the Gallifreyan symbols on the rotor. 'Come on you took him there presumably, help a girl out.'

The TARDIS hummed and the monitor flashed. Clara looked back down at it.

'Last destinations,' she read out loud. 'TARDIS sat nav huh?' she smiled, Thata girl!'

With her finger she scrolled down the touch screen and even in the current circumstance she paused in surprise. The Doctor really had been curtailing his travel over the last few years, she could see only a handful of places. He'd visited Vastra and the gang a few times, hung around on earth in the early 21st century more than she expected, but from what she could tell he really had been sitting on his holodeck alone.

Except for a rather enthusiastic period a few years ago where he'd headed to another planet entirely in a far flung system and hung about for several years in roughly the same location. A city in a place called Tempis. Clara pressed her finger over the word and the planet spun into view, glorious red and orange and ten times the size of earth. Home of the greatest University in the solar system when it came to the science of the mind, 43rd century earth equivalent. Clara read the details quickly. The telepathic skills of the native species and those attracted to the world were profound, the Doctor had clearly thought that if anyone could help him improve his less than impressive mind reading abilities they would be here. She read down the page. They also specialised in neuroscientific exploration and treatments. Well he needed treatment.

Clara entered the co-ordinates and pulled the lever, racing back up to the Doctor as his trusted ship hurtled across the galaxies towards the planet. She heard the engines roaring with particular desperation and felt the TARDIS's own panic growing. The Doctor was gripping for dear life onto Clara's top as she embraced him, trying to cushion him form the increasingly erratic turbulence as every ounce of power from the ship was put into crossing time and space. He cried out as they lurched and buried his head against her chest.

Suddenly the TARDIS came to a violent halt and Clara staggered against the Doctor and his chair. He was breathing hard, eyes shut, blood coming thickly now from his ears. She quickly tried to calculate how she was going to get him to the door, prayed the TARDIS had landed in some sort of medical facility because she honestly had no idea how she'd move him otherwise.

The TARDIS doors swung open and Clara gasped. Outside the light was bright and warm, orange tinted, and several figures were silhouetted in the doorway.

'Hello?' Clara called, 'Hello? I'm really hoping this is the right place,' she squinted against the light, 'I'm with the Doctor, we need your help...'

Silence.

And then.

'We will bring him to our infirmary,' the voices said in unison. 'He is in a great deal of pain and needs attention urgently. Trust in us.'

Clara's mouth opened briefly and then shut again as she watched the figures enter and approach. They were Oods and they spoke in silence, directly to her.

'Thank you,' she said out loud.

'You're welcome, Clara,' they whispered into her mind.


	12. Chapter 12

12.

It should have been eerie but the silence was peaceful. Clara was these days quite use to passing long periods of quiet time contemplating or meditating, after all Ashildr had to sleep sometimes and even frozen in time as she was Clara couldn't be on the go all day. She would often spend a few hours just thinking, waiting. Sometimes it was boring, very boring and her impatience would boil over, but sometimes it was needed.

It was needed now and she was grateful for the view from the open window and the soft breeze. She was grateful for the quiet. Clara was in a round room within a tower, by the window that held no glass, looking down over the city on the planet Tempis. She had been there for a long time watching as the sun and moon circled one another and swapped places in the orange sky. It never became quite fully dark but instead the sky would transform to sunsets and sunrises in an endless dance, seamlessly interchanging colours of reds pinks and yellows. Days were hours here and hours passed quickly. The wind caught her hair every now and then and rustled the light drapes on the walls. It was the only sound aside from those of footsteps. Voices were simply not needed here.

But they could still be heard. Even in Clara's untrained mind the telepathic communication of the planets inhabitants was strong enough to be detected. The Oods she had spoken with kept her up to date with the Doctor's progress even though he was several rooms away. If she needed anything she only had to think it and one of the others in the infirmary would appear a few minutes later with whatever it might be. At first she had been embarrassed that her thoughts could be so easily read but then the Ood had reassured her that her privacy was protected, they would not pry but they could not help but read her immediate needs.

She was like a child, they said, whose mind was as yet unschooled. The Doctor had been little better, they explained, when he had come to Tempis to learn. Clara was surprised. He might have been bottom of the telepathy class in Gallifrey but he was a thousand times better than her. It made her wonder just what incredible capabilities these Oods had. She received a further shock when they explained they were ordinary workers in the infirmary, and that the real experts were within the University. Clara glanced out of the window at the high towers of the building in question. They could probably hear her from where she was.

Yes, the Ood said, they'd heard her from the TARDIS before it even landed. They'd heard the Doctor too. Once educated within the walls of the University he would always on some level retain a link to his mentors, Ood and otherwise, and when the telekinesis went so badly wrong they were immediately aware of his condition. The hive mind of the planet sensed him. They were waiting for him as the TARDIS made its way across the universe, arranging the infirmary to receive its patient.

And Clara? Well they heard her too. She didn't have to study with them or visit them in the past. She was tangled so deeply within the Doctor's mind, so bound to his timestream, she was part of him they said. They might as well be one being, with one mind.

And so now, with the words ringing in her head Clara waited for more news, for the Doctor to wake up and for consequences. She had had enough thinking time to realise the implications of their adventure. She had wanted so badly to be able to brush away the past and start again, she had wanted so badly to fool herself and maybe him too. She'd travelled a hundred years, she was a grown up, she could do this.

She'd pushed him and he was hurt.

It could have been even worse.

She'd asked him for the impossible and he'd tried to do it anyway, like he always did. He'd go to hell and back for her, and he had, twice. Once in her quest for Danny, once for a much longer period in quest for her, to bargain for her life. How many more times would he go? What would happen if he never made it back? To her? To the universe?

And the people on Hydrassus? An afterthought now in her dilemma and that itself was wrong. All those people, the Ageds, the surviving tribe on the planet. She'd seen the moon disintegrate, watched the meteorites fall. They were all gone. Clara and the Doctor had interfered, they had failed to learn from the past. Again.

And yet she kept telling herself it would be OK. That they could fix it. They could always fix it. That's what they did, the pair of them, they fixed things. The Doctor always knew what to do.

Clara chewed her thumbnail and stared out across the city, its buildings glowing gold in the perpetual sunset.

What if he couldn't fix things? What if he couldn't remember how?

Clara's thoughts were disturbed by the soft sound of an Ood stepping into her room. She didn't need to turn around to greet it, the conversation had already begun and she breathed a great sigh of relief when the creature conveyed that the Doctor had woken and was pain free.

He wishes to see you, the present Ood conveyed. An echo followed, a dozen different Oods emphasising quietly, 'the Doctor wishes to see Clara Oswald.'

She turned from the window, automatically replied, 'Thank you.' The Ood cocked its head at her, still curious as to why she spoke with her lips, before remembering her incapacity as a telepath and instead giving her a little bow. It gestured to the door.

I will take you to him, it projected.

Clara followed out of the door and down narrow passages. The infirmary seemed to be built like a hive, all rough hewn walls and little chambers. She caught glimpses inside them as she passed, comfortable warm places, secret places, places were Oods tended the sick and dying, brought them comfort with the presence of their minds in the last moments of their lives.

Finally they reached the Doctor's room. It was larger than the others, and well decorated. There were vases of pink cherry blossom by the window and beautiful tapestries on the walls. Clara spotted the telekinesis cap on one table and frowned, sure it had been destroyed by the TARDIS after everything went wrong.

To one side a realistic projection flickered, showing images from the past. Clara spotted her first meeting with the Doctor when he was dressed as a monk except it came from his point of view. She wore her mother's raven necklace. She watched the picture transform into them arguing on the moon, Clara standing up to him in her bright orange spacesuit. The projection morphed again, Clara and the Doctor, the Orient Express. She looked stunning and Clara thought of rose tinted glasses, the silly old man, she could never have really looked like that.

Clara looked across at the medics. It became clear that the Oods tending to the Doctor were of a superior rank to the nurses in other chambers. The Ood with her caught her thoughts and explained that the Doctor's injury had been very severe. The greatest doctors had wrestled with his treatment and now he was being waited upon by only the most experienced nurses. Among them , the Ood noted, were one or two non Oods from different telepathic species. Clara noted a Silurian and another creature she did not recognise.

The Doctor himself was lying on a large bed covered in a profoundly dark green silk material, and propped up by pillows of the same hue. He had two small metal discs, one on each temple, which presumably linked him to his psychic memory projector. He was looking past his team of Ood carers and out of the window at the sky with an air of sadness about him.

He thinks the colour reminds him of home, the Oods in the room whispered, but he cannot remember.

Clara watched as he rubbed his forehead and blinked hard, strained to conjure the image of Gallifrey to his mind. The image projector flickered again, faded into a shot of Clara in a white room looking at him with utter disbelief. She had just been extracted and in his hand he held a gun.

How much does he remember? She thought in the direction of the Ood.

It looked at her with sympathy. Only you, came the reply.

The others in the room echoed the answer. Only Clara, only Clara Oswald. From their first meeting, to the last time they spoke. All other memories had disintegrated when the telekinesis had backfired. A short circuit, an overload, the Ood projected images of brain pathways into her mind to try to explain, but she knew enough, she sensed it.

'What have I done?' she whispered out loud. It sounded cacophonous in the Oods' silence. 'Oh Doctor, what have I done?' he looked round to her quickly and as though given some unspoken instruction the nurses and Oods fell back from the bed and silently left the chamber so that they were alone.

'Clara…' he said with a smile.

She was done being brave. Clara rushed forward to the bed and climbed across one side of it to reach him, burying her head against his chest and clinging to him as she lay there.

'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,' she said, tears flowing in earnest now. 'Your memory, what have I done to you?'

He held her to him and Clara felt him dip his head to kiss her hair.

'Apparently you've freed up a lot of my hard drive,' he said too lightly, 'I never needed half that stuff anyway.' He looked down at her. 'Don't cry.'

'That stuff was what made you, you, your memories shape you Doctor, they are irreplaceable. I lived for years thinking I had stolen your memories, I regretted it utterly and now this.' Clara said sadly. 'I've taken all that from you…'

'Clara, Clara, Clara, don't be ridiculous,' he admonished softly, 'You didn't take anything from me. As I understand it we were on some sort of adventure and I overreached myself. Apparently that's not unlike me. I get into these scrapes all the time.'

'The Oods tried to fill you in didn't they?' she asked and he nodded, 'But what they don't know is you weren't that keen about the whole thing, you wanted to be cautious, you'd largely given up adventures but when we couldn't avoid this one you didn't want to go too far, interfere where perhaps it wasn't our place to, and… and… it was my fault,' she burst out, 'You did it for me, you always do it for me. I'm just as reckless and thoughtless as I always was, no I'm worse. All those times you tried to warn me. I got myself killed, Doctor and I'm not even alive now properly and I'm still acting like an idiot… I should have gone straight back to Gallifrey, I should have faced it…'

'Shh, don't talk about the Raven,' he hushed her urgently, soothing her back. 'Please, not that, I remember that vividly.'

'But…'

'Shh, Clara. Things aren't so bad…'

'No? How? How can you think that?'

'Well the very clever Oods have sorted out quite a lot of the damage. They've stabilised the neuropathways, fixed my frontal lobe so I'm less disinhibited and prevented further burn out. I can still lay down new memories which is a huge relief. Imagine if I had the memory of a goldfish and the disinhibition together. I'd be forever saying 'Clara, Clara, have I told you I love you, because I do. Clara have I told you…!' he laughed, 'That would drive you mad!'

She smiled a little uncertainly, wiped her tears with her sleeve.

'I've forgotten huge chunks, you're right,' he acknowledged. 'I can't remember anything of my childhood at all, apart from a nightmare I had, something under the bed,' he frowned, ' But nothing after it, no school, parents, nothing. It's a strange feeling. I have huge gaps with nothing in them at all, and then intense little bits you feature in. It sort of makes you even more special,' he looked down somewhat awkwardly and glanced at her for approval. Clara kissed his chest and he looked relieved.

'So...' he went on. 'The Oods have found some texts I feature heavily in to help me regain a sense of myself. I must say I'm not entirely sure I want to read them, they look a bit grim. The History of the Time War being the most prominent. I don't feel like a very war like person, it bothers me… Maybe that one is best forgotten.'

'Maybe… you sort of were a different person back then.' Clara answered hesitantly. 'Maybe we leave that one for a bit and just get you back on your feet first.'

'Yes,' he pulled her close again and snuggled against her. Clara bit back more tears and tried hard to freeze the moment in her mind. He seemed OK. He'd forgotten large swathes of the past but he was still her Doctor. His humour, his warmth and his love for her were unchanged. New memories could be made. Right?

They watched the interchanging sun and moon for a few minutes, the Doctor's steady breathing gradually relaxing Clara. She found herself softly stroking his bare chest and dropped a kiss to his collarbone causing him to shift under her weight a little and draw her fully against his body.

'I'm so glad you're ok,' she said quietly, 'You are OK right, you're not leaving anything out?'

'I'm OK. There's even a chance some of those memories might come back at some point. The TARDIS probably has copies too.'

Clara squinted at him, 'What?'

'Time Lords, we're obsessed with uploading our memories. I never wanted them unloaded on Gallifrey but I've stashed quite a few with the old girl.'

'How do you remember that?'

'Oods, they had a good poke about the TARDIS, I gave them permission. They needed to see what I'd been playing with.' He nodded towards the singed looking telekinesis cap. 'She obligingly dug it out the trash for them. Still works. Well sort of.'

'What?!'

'Don't worry I've learned my lesson,' he chuckled, 'I won't be trying to move any more planet sized objects. I'll stick to something smaller.'

Clara was about to tell him that he'd better not when one of the sprigs of blossom by the window slowly pulled itself free from its friends in its vase and hovered in mid-air. The Doctor turned to her and raised his eyebrows in an expression that begged her to be impressed. The blossom began drifting towards her.

'Stop that!' Clara batted him, 'Stop it. Your brain, your stupid brain has had enough damage!' The blossom floated over to the bed and slowly began to settle between them, the Doctor reaching up and helping it the last few inches so that it could lie between their bodies. Clara inhaled the scent and thought of their interlude on the holodeck. Apparently he could remember it too as he nuzzled her temple and planted a soft kiss there.

'It's only a little bit of telekinesis. Nothing fancy,' he said leaning over her a little. 'Oods made sure I didn't lose it all.'

'Well stop it. And get rid of the hat while you're at it, I don't trust that thing.'

'Oh..' he looked sad, 'I… well I was hoping I could…'

'What?'

'Well you remember I said I was working on it for someone?'

'Yes, how do you remember that?'

'Because it was for you,' he looked down the bed, away from her eyes, a little ashamed.

'Me?' Clara threw him a puzzled look. 'What do I want with a telekinesis hat you idiot?'

'I wanted to make amends,' he said, his words echoing from a few days before during the experiment with the moon.

'For what?' Clara asked genuinely lost.

The Doctor seemed to change his mind suddenly and tried to dismiss the idea. 'It's silly I just, I couldn't get it out of my head, and then when we met up again it became even more obvious.'

'What became more obvious?'

'Well the thing, Clara, the thing with your heart.'

Clara hesitated. 'The thing with my heart. You mean its non-beating.'

'Yes.'

'I don't follow.'

'The Doctor sighed, cornered into his confession.

The cap isn't really for me, it's optimised for a human. I mean I can use it to magnify things but most of the time I don't need to be moving moons. I can do day to day telekinesis without much enhancement.'

'The hat thing is for me?' Clara asked.

'Yes.'

'I'm not telekinetic, or telepathic, or anything.'

'All humans have potential. There are humans trained in telepathy here on this planet, in this university. By the 43rd century you're all quite talented. I found it pretty inspiring when I was studying here, I really thought it might one day, help you.'

'So this thing activates my potential?'

'Yes.'

'I still don't get it,' Clara admitted. 'What do I need to do with telekinesis?'

The Doctor looked at her sadly, 'It was just… it was an option.'

'What are you on about?'

He sighed. 'I extracted you from time. You have a single heart beat left in your natural life cycle.'

'Yes.'

'Without your heart you are frozen. You don't have to eat, sleep, drink. Your blood doesn't flow. You can't feel certain things,' he said meaningfully, 'and you can't…you can't give life… you can't have a child.'

'What?' Clara asked him with gentle curiosity, her eyes wide but her voice hushed. She'd never heard him speak like this before, he never mentioned children, his or anyone else's. Once or twice she'd spotted him absorbed in someone's new baby but she'd always thought he'd done that out of some sort of scientific interest. He spoke their language, he was probably discussing the weather with them.

'You always wanted that,' he was saying, 'Don't dismiss me, Clara, I've seen you with children. Plus… telepath, I could feel it coming off you in waves whenever there was a baby nearby. You always wanted to be a mother, to be as good a mother as your own was to you. As things are, you can't. Without a heartbeat you can't sustain a pregnancy, you can't get pregnant to begin with…'

'Stop it,' she said a little too sharply. 'Things change, stuff happens, I've had a hundred years to accept it can't happen. Raising a family doesn't exactly go with adventuring or being dead.'

His already unhappy face fell further at the blunt words and she felt a tug of guilt.

'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I just wanted to… I just wanted to give it back to you.'

'Give what back exactly,' Clara asked in semi frustration, 'I never asked you to give me anything.'

'The choice,' he said looking at her, 'The choice I took from you. Your heartbeat. I can't unfreeze time, I can't do anything about Trap Street, but I can give you the illusion of a natural life. I can make your heart beat, outside of its natural lifespan, without interfering with time or Trap Street… and with this device so can you.' He stopped noting her stunned expression. 'It was a silly idea, really silly.' He tried to laugh, 'Like you'd be seen with that thing on your head for months on end. Ridiculous, wouldn't have worked.'

Clara was looking at him with something between love and confusion. 'Let me get this straight. You worked out a way of letting me borrow some heartbeats, create some for long enough for me to have a child, without it interfering with the time line. You wanted to give me the option?' he nodded. 'You wanted to… make my heart beat… so that I…'

'So you could have everything you deserve,' he said.

There was a silence.

'Doctor I don't know what to say.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I'm not wearing that hat, I don't trust it or any other weird device,' she clarified.

'I understand.'

Clara reached down between them and took his hand, bringing it up to her chest and pressing it against her breast, where the blossom lay between them.

'But I trust you,' she said quietly. He looked at her with confusion. 'You do it,' she said, 'You make my heart beat.'


	13. Chapter 13

13.

For a moment all her hopes hinged on his ability to touch her heart. For a moment it all seemed so simple. They could be together, they could forge a different future. She didn't have to hurt anymore and neither did he.

'Clara,' he just looked at her, their faces close together on the smooth dark material of the pillows. 'This isn't something to take lightly.'

She nodded, feeling defeated, knowing the Doctor was right, that his words were supported by her own sense of guilt, by what she had done to him. His memories were stripped bare of everything except her. Being together didn't work. It was a fantasy. She had been wrong to try.

'We should go our separate ways,' she started hesitantly and then looked him in the eye, 'Shouldn't we?' Clara saw him swallow his emotion and break their gaze. 'I'm right aren't I?' she said.

'No, no, it doesn't have to come to that again,' he argued unconvincingly.

'But it does. Don't you see, look what happened. The moment we get tangled up together, the moment we try to help some poor tribe on a planet, we end up hurting each other. At best we interfered with Hydrassus, at worse we helped to kill all those people…'

'Clara, no… I'm sure it wasn't…' he rubbed his forehead, 'I don't remember, I don't…'

'Exactly, you don't remember, and that's my doing,' Clara cursed herself.

There was a pause so loud she could almost hear him thinking.

'Some things never change,' he said eventually, 'I would still… well there's nothing I wouldn't attempt to keep you safe, to make you happy. I never want to let you down.'

'You set yourself impossible standards,' Clara said, 'You beat yourself up for things that aren't your fault but you forgive me everything. We're a toxic mixture when it comes to it.'

She could feel his breathing alter and watched as the blossom nestled between their chests moved against them with each breath.

'So that's decided then,' Clara said.

What is?' he looked fearfully at her, all blue eyes and pale skin. Exhausted and drained from his ordeal with the telekinesis and for a moment, just a moment Clara thought she couldn't do it. She couldn't walk away.

And then she thought of the blood on the floor of the holodeck and the sound of the pain he had endured.

She took a breath. 'We get you back on your feet, make sure you're OK and you haven't forgotten to drive your TARDIS or something…' she spoke with false levity.

'Clara, please…'

'And then we go in our opposite direction,' she finished.

'Clara… no...'

'We have to Doctor,' she couldn't look at him. She could hear it in his voice. She knew if she looked up his eyes would be red, there might even be tears and she couldn't stand it. Why did she always have to hurt him? Why did she always mess it up?

She felt his hand on her chest again, over her still dead heart.

'Please,' he whispered, the gravel of emotion in his tone, 'Don't run. Stay with me.'

Clara felt a stabbing in her chest and a gasp turned to a sob. She wanted to stay. She wanted all of it. She wanted to live again, not exist in stasis. She wanted him and everything he could offer. She wanted to be whole and she wanted him to reconnect. No more sitting for years on an empty holodeck mourning the past, avoiding the present. No more going through the motions.

No more running through space and time, trying to elude one another.

No more being different people from their true selves and all the sadness that contained.

She couldn't do this.

Clara was done being apart, drifting in their muddled timestreams trying to pretend they were separate. It would never be possible, it couldn't be forced. From the day she stepped into his timestream she became a part of him, his Impossible Girl, the universe couldn't keep them apart? She couldn't bear it, she wouldn't bear it.

She sobbed, 'I can't…I need you, I can't…'

Clara's hand covered the Doctor's and her lips met with his gingerly. Small, careful kisses. The feel of his skin against her nose, soft beard against her chin. Her chest constricted along with her throat. She couldn't say goodbye.

It was only fair wasn't it? It was no life for him on that holodeck, he was half the person he used to be living that way. Now he'd had half his life wiped from his memory. It wasn't fair and she had to set it straight. She wouldn't send him back out there in his TARDIS alone when all he knew was her, she was all he had now. The single thread running through his entire existence.

The Doctor couldn't remember, he didn't know he was a good man. All the good he'd done. All the people he had saved. He needed Clara there to show him, show him all the things he had done right, so he could balance the memories of Trenzalore, the loneliness of the confession dial, the stories written about him as the War Doctor. Only she could reflect the other side, the man with the two hearts.

Her mood swung away from despair, she wasn't giving up. There would be no arguing. She was more determined than ever. Her cautious 'could we?' had become 'we will.'

They were owed their time together. Owed.

She kissed him again, forced him to look her in the eye. She was right, he was crying and she wondered how often he had, all those years when he remembered her.

'Go on,' she said firmly. 'You said you made that thing so I could make my heart beat, but I can't. You can, can't you? You've enough telekinesis to make a few valves function without a silly hat, pump a little blood?' she tried to keep her voice light and jokey but it trembled. This was huge. This went against everything she'd been living by for the last century. All the rules she had laid down for herself regarding the Doctor, all the reasons they had agreed on years ago.

Well that was then and this was now and some things changed. And some things didn't. He was everything and that never altered.

She was sure. When he said he could make her heart beat she knew he didn't just mean a physical collection of valves and muscle. For the last hundred years she had performed like an automaton, constantly reminded of the emptiness inside. Clara ached when her heart lay still inside her. How long had it done that and how lonely she had been? No one could replace his memory, no one ever would. What was the point of being immortal without him?

'Do it,' she told him.

Her last memories of her fluttering heart were of facing down death and saying goodbye to the man she loved. It was never meant to be that way, she wanted it fixed. Right now.

'Clara…'

'Please,' her tears were betraying her as hard as she tried to fight them. 'Please just do whatever it is you do. Please just make my heart beat, I want this so much, I want to be part of you again.'

'You're sure? This idea... it… Clara, I was just a lonely old man wasting time on his own, wishing he could change the past.'

'But that's what you do, Doctor, change the past. So change it, change it for us.'

'Not this, this is different you know that.'

'It doesn't have to be. We just find another way. You and me, we always did that, we worked round a problem. We can have it all Doctor, all of it, at last you just do a Clever Thing and away we go...'

'It never works like that…' he countered, his voice heavy with experience.

'It can. It will,' she said somewhat fiercely. 'Us together. A life. A pulse. It's like you said, you wanted to give me the option. Optional heartbeat, how incredible is that? I can live and breathe and feel but I'm still in control of when that last heartbeat will happen on Trap Street.'

'Clara one day…'

'One day, not now, not soon. Think about this. Neither of us has to be alone.'

He looked uncomfortable for a moment. His internal debate raging. In the past they ahd been toxic, why should this be any different. Clara watched his face.

'Please, please Doctor. It can be so different. Two semi immortals, we could be together. And if this idea works, one day, we could have a child. You were a father once, you can be again.'

Something in her words hit him hard. There had always been an empty space in their dialogue where his family was never mentioned. She knew he had had one, had grandchildren even, but he never spoke of them. He had lost them all, hundreds of years ago. Time Lord, Oncoming Storm, Bringer of Darkness. He carried with him all of that but when Clara looked at him she saw so much more potential. Lover, husband, father. A different type of adventure. Safe? More domestic? No less exciting for either of them.

She sensed it hurt more than ever now. He never spoke of it but she knew he had already been through the loss of all his loved ones. It had hurt him more than anything else in his long life, but now he couldn't even remember those children, their faces gone, their voices silenced. Every precious memory had been erased by this accident, this accident she had pushed him into. Guilt added pressure to her pitch and she took a final step. He deserved something more. She could never replace them but…

'Hey,' she said quietly as he struggled, 'Wasn't there something you always wanted to ask me?'

'What? I...' the realisation dawned and stopped him in his tracks. 'I wouldn't, not now, not after everything, I missed my chance Clara, timing, we have terrible timing, I always get it wrong…'

'The answer is yes,' she said.

Clara saw him fight with himself a moment longer, gnawing his lip and raw emotion in his eyes. She found herself praying for him to act. Finally without moving his gaze from her she felt him push aside the soft fabric of her top and allow his palm to cover her breast, skin on skin. Clara squeezed herself closer to him, felt his breath on her lips.

'I don't know what it will feel like,' he said in rough tones, 'After all this time. You'll be so used to the still and quiet. I don't know if this is right… It might feel wrong.'

'Do it anyway, let me be the judge.'

'Clara, I never wanted…' his voice caught and it he took a second to get it back under control. 'I never wanted things to go the way it did back then, I would never do anything to hurt you. All I ever wanted to do was protect you. I just got everything so wrong. I was so afraid…'

'I know, I know, it's ok,' Clara placed a hand on his cheek just like she had all that time ago on Trap Street when she was saying goodbye. This wasn't goodbye. This was a new beginning, a new life together. She leant her forehead against his where they lay side by side, 'Do it,' she told him, and Doctor pressed his hand against her and she watched him close his eyes.

There was silence.

A soft hum in her mind.

And there it was. Her heartbeat. And it changed everything.

It tripped and fluttered at first and in Clara's mind she pictured a new born animal trying to find its feet. She giggled. It didn't feel like something which had been dormant all this time, it didn't feel odd or strange. It wasn't old or stale. Those first heartbeats were new and fresh, tickling in her chest and then gradually establishing a stronger rhythm. Thump, thump, thump thump.

Clara gasped and her lungs expanded suddenly, coached by her heartbeat back into actual function. They shed their illusion of life and she coughed once or twice before her breathing steadied out. Clara realised the Doctor was watching her carefully, his hand still over her breast and his eyes watching her take each breath like it was a miracle. Like it might stop at any moment.

'I'm… fine, I'm fine,' she said. 'It's all a bit new but its fine, it feels good.' Clara closed her eyes for a second, 'Oh that's loud,' she giggled again, 'heartbeat… really loud, how did I ever put up with this before?' she looked at him and laughed. 'This is weird. Good weird obviously.'

The Doctor's face twitched into a cautious smile of his own and she saw his eyes grow wet as Clara experimentally took her pulse, her own eyes shining with happiness. She felt her cheeks flush with joy and watched his responding grin.

'You're blushing,' he said.

'I haven't blushed in a hundred years!' she laughed. 'Thank you,' she said and pulled him closer, pressed her lips against his for a moment. He caught her there unexpectedly, sucked on her lower lip, moved the hand that had been guiding her heartbeat to her back. Clara broke away.

'Wait, my heart's still beating right?'

'I think I can make it beat without contact if I need to. As long as you're near me. I just wanted to get it started properly, it's not something I do every day.'

'I should hope not,' Clara beamed at him, kissed him again and pressed the length of her body against him. She felt him squirm and adjust his hold on her before his hand pushed through her hair, and he was pressing her onto her back amongst the dark sheets. Clara heard him moan low in his throat and a shot of pure pleasure went through her making her gasp and lose her place on his kiss. She'd forgotten, how intense it could feel, how her skin could burn and tingle, how need and desire could appear from nowhere and leave her breathless.

'Oh!' she squeaked and he stopped, looked down at her in concern.

'Clara?'

'Nothing, I'm fine I just…' he cocked his head at her and gave her a half smirk.

'Been a while?' he asked knowingly.

'Shut up,' she giggled and he began to kiss her neck languidly, run his hands down over the curves of her body. 'I just wasn't expecting it to be... so… so…' her words left her.

'Good?' he muttered, relieved, happy, desperate to please.

'Good,' she breathed as his mouth found her collarbone and his fingers unbuttoned her top. He lifted the sprig of cherry blossom from between them and set it carefully to one side. Clara's eyes fluttered shut at the sensation of his soft curls against the skin of her stomach, his mouth on her hip, her thigh. She carefully drew in long deep breaths and felt the oxygen spill down her limbs in tingling waves. She moaned and let out a whimper as he continued his journey, fisted her hand in his hair.

Clara's heart pounded in her chest. Over and over, steady and rising.

'I feel alive,' she said.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

'I can feel you being smug,' Clara said mockingly from where she lay, head on the Doctor's bare chest. The dark green bedsheets were rumpled and tangled around their bodies and across the room the Ood thought projection device appeared to be scrolling though images from the last few hours. Clara could feel herself blush and hoped none of the Doctor's attendants would appear from nowhere to check on them.

'Smug?' he queried, a particularly vivid image appearing before them. 'What can I possibly be smug about?'

'You know,' she giggled and felt the vibration of her heartbeats vary with the movement. She had already decided this might take a bit of getting used to but she was giddy with happiness. She wondered on a practical level about not needing to have her heart beating all the time. She considered if the Doctor could do it while he slept or if he had to 'log off' and leave her heartbeatless for a spell each day. They were odd but intriguing queries, she decided, laughing to herself helplessly.

'Clara, your thoughts are ridiculous.'

'Stop listening. Anyway they are valid questions. Questions we will need to address. At some point. Not now,' she made a comfortable noise and buried herself deeper under the covers and into the Doctor. She snuggled a moment longer and then opened her eyes, 'It's going to be OK,' she said to herself and felt a heaviness in her stomach for a moment.

'You don't sound convinced,' he remarked kindly. She felt her joy abate a little.

'Things go wrong when we're together,' she said.

'Lots of things go right too,' he countered. 'A lot of the time things go right.'

'When we do something that goes wrong, it's very wrong, destroy the universe wrong.'

'We could have avoided all of that,' the Doctor said, carefully stroking her back, 'It's my fault.'

'No.'

'It is.'

'It's both of us,' Clara said resignedly. 'Oh God, this will be Ok won't it? It has to be?'

'Yes,' he said, his tone less than concrete.

Her thoughts ticked over the events of the last few days, the conversations she had had with the Aged and the Hydrassiuns, the ghastly vision of the moon disintegrating and what it had done to the Doctor. It all seemed doomed, that the wrong outweighed the right. Were they just kidding themselves?

'I wonder what happened to them all?' Clara said quietly, knowing the Doctor would pick up on the images.

'What would have happened if we hadn't been there most probably? I don't know Clara, memory still not great so it makes it harder to predict, I've forgotten the data and the future, now the present, has changed. It all sounded pretty gloomy though from what I've pieced together.'

Clara frowned. 'We thought the whole moon would hit the planet. Or it would disintegrate and hit the landmass. But the moon broke into little pieces, and you moved them out of the way of the peninsula, at least you tried. I saw that. Isn't there any hope at all that maybe some of the people them go through it, like they said they might, like they had with the plague?'

The Doctor looked down at her in his arms. 'It's going to drive you mad isn't it?'

'Yes,' she nodded, 'I need to know. Please.'

The Doctor sat up and located a dark blue silken robe, drawing the tie tight around his waist and making his way to the memory projector. He stopped in front of it where a small panel allowed him to input some digits and queries. He ruffled his grey curls with one hand.

'Ok so this is what I can remember,' he pointed to the projection which morphed into Hydrassus and the moon in its orbit about to burst through the atmosphere. 'All pretty hazy although I have a sharp image of you drinking a milkshake outside your diner.'

'That's what you remember? That's ridiculous.'

'Well don't say you were never my priority Clara,' he said as he typed, 'Even whilst performing insane experiments with telekinesis I'm really thinking of you.'

'Sap.'

'You don't like my every memory being of you?' he asked.

'I want you to have all your memories,' Clara said sadly.

'You never know,' he replied looking at the projection, 'Give me time… Time Lord brains heal pretty well. Right here's the planet now according to Ood database. Latest mapping from 43rd century.'

The image changed suddenly and Hydrassus appeared, blue and green as always except for deep purple poles, north and south. The Doctor pouted slightly, read some information in what Clara assumed was 'Oodish' at the bottom.

'It's populated,' he said curiously, 'Same species as before. Some of them must have survived. And look at this. The meteorites landed in the ocean, pierced the crust, but it was able to seal over again due to low temperatures in the water. The two materials formed a hybrid core, stabilised the lot and minimised destruction, radiation and physical effects of the collision.'

'Ripples not tidal waves,' Clara smiled as the information percolated. The weight in her stomach lifted and she felt herself actively taking a breath of relief. Her heart was pounding at the Doctor's command, linked by some means to his own pulse, so it would seem it had been anxious to see the fate of the Hydrassiuns too.

'Close call,' she went on, 'scared me, will never do anything like that again, cross my heart – its beating now its fine to promise - but… We got away with it.'

'We did,' he smiled, puzzled but serious, 'I think we really did,' he pondered, 'But we need learn from this Clara.'

She rolled her eyes at affectionately him for effect, picked up the cherry blossom sprig and inhaled its scent closely. 'Go on, mister, do your thing.'

The Doctor had clearly had an epiphany. 'Sometimes you have to let things play out,' he explained, 'Sometimes there's no stopping two bodies from…'

Clara sniggered.

'Very mature,' he chided half-heartedly. 'No, two forces like that, moon and planet, you can't keep them apart, the pull of gravity is too much, it will happen no matter what you do. Let it come together, trust in the universe. She usually knows what she's doing.'

'She does,' Clara agreed. She watched Hydrassus spin slowly on its axis, imagined the population going about their daily lives. The universe had decided the moon and planet would be forced together no matter what, and now they were so knitted into each other's cores they were one and the same. Like her and the Doctor. Inseparable even after all of time and space were placed between them.

'I wasn't sure,' she confessed, 'I thought it had all gone so wrong, that we'd messed up again while trying to do our best for the other person. That we'd be just so scared of the damage we can do to each other, to the universe….'

'I was scared too,' he came to sit by her on the bed.

'But I believe in us now,' Clara said. 'I feel it. We're, I don't know, joined?'

He laughed, not unkindly. 'How very Zen,' he mocked.

'It's… peaceful,' she tried. 'Do you get that? Now we're here like this. Honest, together?'

'You're right…' the Doctor said, plucking the cherry blossom from her hand and breathing in a long deep gulp of perfume. 'Always are. But I think Clara, despite everything we've been through, that it is much simpler than that.'

'Oh?'

'We just needed to be together,' he said, 'We just needed to say… I love you and embrace what that meant once and for all,' he leaned forward and kissed her.

'No more dancing round it?'

'Exactly.'

'We're a hybrid,' she giggled.

He sighed, 'Yes.'

'You and me. Same old same old,' Clara replied.

He let the blossom brush the end of her nose gently to punctuate his words and smiled a hitherto hidden and dazzling smile. 'Almost, but importantly… Not. Quite.'


	14. Chapter 14

Epilogue

'This is the problem with the real thing,' the Doctor grumbled from his position under the tree, 'You can't turn the volume down on the pedestrians, not to mention your primitive twenty first century transport. What made you chose here for goodness sake? There's a whole number of perfectly pleasant parks all across the galaxy. Quiet parks. Parks without people.'

Clara smiled and ignored him, choosing instead to extract a large chocolate cake from a smaller on the outside hamper and start dividing it up on plates. K-9 took the hint and shot over to the pond where he began to circle barking. He knew his duties once the food was being distributed and away he went scaring ducks and waterfowl.

'Now the dog's at it too,' the Doctor grouched. 'Remind me to alter his maximum volume.'

'What's the matter with you today anyway,' Clara laughed, 'You're like a bear with a sore head.'

'Yes well I didn't sleep much,' the Doctor whined, 'Some of us still need sleep, Clara, we can't be up all night because someone's full of e-number induced energy or had a nightmare about something under the bed.'

'I thought you'd cut the e-numbers out?' Clara asked him.

'Not me, you idiot!'

'Do you still get that dream?' she asked.

'No,' he confessed, 'The thing under the bed has become the thing in my bed. Although it can be just as disruptive when it steals the blankets.'

She snorted and handed him some cake. 'Here, totally e-number free. Made it myself.'

He eyed it suspiciously for a moment. 'Right, well, at least your baking is improving. Been long enough trying to get it right.'

'Shut up or I'll take it back and give it to the dog.'

'K-9 isn't actually a real dog you know…' he began.

'Shh,' Clara gestured at him, 'Yes he is, he's a totally one hundred percent real loyal canine dog who is very much loved by this family and most explicitly by your children whose hearts will break if they realise he's just a robot.'

'He's not just a robot!' the Doctor argued. 'But he isn't a dog either he's a …'

'Kids!' Clara called over him, 'Come and get some cake, leave the ducks alone and stop throwing stones in the pond you're scaring them!'

There was a small kafuffle and then two small brown eyed humans and a robot dog trotted across the parkland to the cluster of trees their parents had chosen for today's picnic. At a guess they were no older than three or four and took after their mother. The little boy crashed to a halt by his mum, attacked his cake and was immediately covered in melted chocolate by some unfathomable means; but his sister, a year younger and sporting a pleasant wide face chose instead to climb into her father's lap and carefully eat her treat. A breeze blew and a smattering of blossom feel to the ground. She wiped it carefully from her yellow dress. The Doctor picked petals from her hair.

Clara was right of course, the real Regents Park was much better than the one he had made on his holodeck.

More noise, more traffic, more people.

More family, more love.

More cherry blossom than he had expected. Thick in the trees and falling like a blanket to the ground around them. The Doctor watched as Clara brushed the crumbs from her hands and poured herself another glass of lemonade. He smirked and she stopped, pressed one hand to her chest and tried to repress a smile as she mouthed 'stop it' to her husband and 'not now.'

He couldn't help but laugh. He never tired of making her heart flutter.


End file.
